More than 1,000 never-before-seen space rocks have been discovered in the solar system 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, a new study shows.
In the new study, published March 15 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, researchers highlighted 1,031 previously uncategorized asteroids from archival Hubble data. They were identified by artificial intelligence that was trained by thousands of citizen scientists to spot faint streaks of light left behind by the tiny space rocks.
Although these asteroids were discovered randomly, their projected orbits suggest that most of them belong to a single population within the asteroid belt, which makes them even more valuable to researchers. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.The asteroid streaks in the Hubble photos are the result of the space telescope racing around Earth as it takes long-exposure images of distant galaxies. The asteroids would normally go unnoticed in images like this because the space rocks are millions of times fainter than the faintest stars in the night sky.