Artificial Intelligence may be our Chance to stopping Armageddon

kingsclot (49)in #science • 7 years ago

Scientist are training computers to help us stop asteroids from crashing into our planet ( Induced Armageddon)

Let's imagine that a giant asteroid as been spotted heading straight for earth, the question that would arise in such situations will be: "What should we do?" And different answers will arise in our confused minds like: 1: Tow it away or Blow it up?... Now some researchers have a better idea saying instead of asking yourself, why not ask the computer..
A group of planetary defense experts have proposed three main ways for which the earth can fend off a potential planet killer; By nuking it, luring it away by the gravitational tug of a spacecraft or by crashing something into it. But as the case may be, not all asteroids are the same, therefore one method may not work for two or more different asteroids depending on the speed, size and distance of the incoming rock threats.

"We obviously don't have the money or time to develop and test all of [the methods]," said Erika Nesvold, an astrophysicist formerly at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., during her presentation at this week's meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland. "So we want to know how can we decide which of these technologies is most likely to work."

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Following a project named "Deflector selector", Nesvild and her team came up with 18million attempts that could save us from asteroids induced armagedin. They then utilized part of the idea simulated to train a computer system to determine the beat possible way to stop as asteroid. They reserved the other parts of the 18million simulated results to test the computer programme afterwards.
After training, the computer was then able to make the call in few minuits, compared to the previous methods which took days to produce detailed simulations. Its results matched the simulated results for more than 90% of the times.
For the record, the researchers also found out that for about one-quarter of the simulated senerios, none out of the three methods could have been able to stop the asteroids from crashing on the earths surface. Nesvold and her team hopes that their methods can guide future efforts to develop better and more effective planetary defense tools that could be a better detector campaign or a faster rocket. It could save us from extinction, unlike the dinosaurs...