SPACE
Scientists find more than 1,000 new objects in the Solar System
WORDS HARRY BAKER
GLOBAL EYE
Showcasing the incredible world we live in
Artificial intelligence trained by citizen scientists helped uncover more than 1,000 new asteroids from old Hubble photos
Over 1,000 never-before-seen space rocks have been discovered after
secretly photobombing images of the cosmos for decades. A
combination of artificial intelligence and citizen scientists helped uncover the asteroids hiding in archival photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. Our cosmic neighbourhood is littered with asteroids of varying size. Scientists have already discovered more than 1.3 million of the space rocks, most of which lie in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. There are likely hundreds of thousands – if not millions – more asteroids waiting to be discovered. However, these remaining space rocks are likely the smallest and therefore faintest bodies in the Solar System, which makes them very hard to spot.