Utilizing a novel AI-driven method, researchers enhanced the precision of estimating critical cosmological parameters by analyzing galaxy distributions.
This breakthrough allows for more refined studies of dark matter and energy, with implications for resolving the Hubble tension and other cosmic mysteries.
AI Revolution in Cosmology
The universe’s behavior can be described by six key numbers, known as cosmological parameters. Using an innovative AI-driven approach, researchers from the Flatiron Institute and their collaborators have uncovered hidden information in the distribution of galaxies to estimate five of these parameters with remarkable precision.
Their method delivered significantly more accurate results compared to traditional techniques. In fact, it reduced the uncertainty by more than half for the parameter that describes the clumpiness of matter in the universe. The AI-powered estimates also aligned closely with values derived from other cosmic phenomena, such as the oldest light in the universe.
The Simulation-Based Inference of Galaxies, or SimBIG, allows astronomers to leverage artificial intelligence techniques to better estimate key properties of the universe. This video compares the distribution of galaxies in a simulated universe used to train SimBIG (right) to the galaxy distribution seen in the real universe (left). Credit: Bruno Régaldo-Saint Blancard/SimBIG collaboration
Introducing SimBIG
The researchers introduced their method, called Simulation-Based Inference of Galaxies (SimBIG), in a series of recent papers, including a study published on August 21 in Nature Astronomy.
Generating tighter constraints on the parameters while using the same data will be crucial to studying everything from the composition of dark matter to the nature of the dark energy driving the universe apart, says study co-author Shirley Ho, a group leader at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) in New York City. That’s especially true as new surveys of the cosmos come online over the next few years, she says.
High-Stakes Universe Studies
“Each of these surveys costs hundreds of millions to billions of dollars,” Ho says. “The main reason these surveys exist is because we want to understand these cosmological parameters better. So if you think about it in a very practical sense, these parameters are worth tens of millions of dollars each. You want the best analysis you can to extract as much knowledge out of these surveys as possible and push the boundaries of our understanding of the universe.”
The six cosmological parameters describe the amount of ordinary matter, dark matter and dark energy in the universe and the conditions following the Big Bang, such as the opacity of the newborn universe as it cooled and whether mass in the cosmos is spread out or in big clumps. The parameters “are essentially the ‘settings’ of the universe that determine how it operates on the largest scales,” says Liam Parker, co-author of the Nature Astronomy study and a research analyst at the CCA.
Innovations in Galaxy Analysis
One of the most important ways cosmologists calculate the parameters is by studying the clustering of the universe’s galaxies. Previously, these analyses only looked at the large-scale distribution of galaxies.
“We haven’t been able to go down to small scales,” says ChangHoon Hahn, an associate research scholar at Princeton University and lead author of the Nature Astronomy study. “For a couple of years now, we’ve known that there’s additional information there; we just didn’t have a good way of extracting it.”
Leveraging AI for Deep Insights
Hahn proposed a way to leverage AI to extract that small-scale information. His plan had two phases. First, he and his colleagues would train an AI model to determine the values of the cosmological parameters based on the appearance of simulated universes. Then they’d show their model actual galaxy distribution observations.
Hahn, Ho, Parker, and their colleagues trained their model by showing it 2,000 box-shaped universes from the CCA-developed Quijote simulation suite, with each universe created using different values for the cosmological parameters. The researchers even made the 2,000 universes appear like data generated by galaxy surveys — including flaws from the atmosphere and the telescopes themselves — to give the model realistic practice. “That’s a large number of simulations, but it’s a manageable amount,” Hahn says. “If you didn’t have the machine learning, you’d need hundreds of thousands.”
By ingesting the simulations, the model learned over time how the values of the cosmological parameters correlate with small-scale differences in the clustering of galaxies, such as the distance between individual pairs of galaxies. SimBIG also learned how to extract information from the bigger-picture arrangement of the universe’s galaxies by looking at three or more galaxies at a time and analyzing the shapes created between them, like long, stretched triangles or squat equilateral triangles.
Precise Measurements and Future Prospects
With the model trained, the researchers presented it with 109,636 real galaxies measured by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. As they hoped, the model leveraged small-scale and large-scale details in the data to boost the precision of its cosmological parameter estimates. Those estimates were so precise that they were equivalent to a traditional analysis using around four times as many galaxies. That’s important, Ho says, because the universe only has so many galaxies. By getting higher precision with less data, SimBIG can push the limits of what’s possible.
One exciting application of that precision, Hahn says, will be the cosmological crisis known as the Hubble tension. The tension arises from mismatched estimates of the Hubble constant, which describes how quickly everything in the universe is spreading out.
Calculating the Hubble constant requires estimating the universe’s size using ‘cosmic rulers.’ Estimates based on the distance to exploding stars called supernovae in distant galaxies are around 10 percent higher than those based on the spacing of fluctuations in the universe’s oldest light.
New surveys coming online in the next few years will capture more of the universe’s history. Pairing data from those surveys with SimBIG will better reveal the extent of the Hubble tension, and whether the mismatch can be resolved or if it necessitates a revised model of the universe, Hahn says. “If we measure the quantities very precisely and can firmly say that there is a tension, that could reveal new physics about dark energy and the expansion of the universe,” he says.
Reference: “Cosmological constraints from non-Gaussian and nonlinear galaxy clustering using the SimBIG inference framework” by ChangHoon Hahn, Pablo Lemos, Liam Parker, Bruno Régaldo-Saint Blancard, Michael Eickenberg, Shirley Ho, Jiamin Hou, Elena Massara, Chirag Modi, Azadeh Moradinezhad Dizgah and David Spergel, 21 August 2024, Nature Astronomy.
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02344-2
Hahn, Ho and Parker worked on the Nature Astronomy SimBIG study alongside Michael Eickenberg of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Mathematics (CCM), Pablo Lemos of the CCA, Chirag Modi of the CCA and the CCM, Bruno Régaldo-Saint Blancard of the CCM, Simons Foundation president David Spergel, Jiamin Hou of the University of Florida, Elena Massara of the University of Waterloo, and Azadeh Moradinezhad Dizgah of the University of Geneva.
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6 Comments
We are getting closer to the answers to the basic question.
A VERY well written article. I understood all of it and was amazed that I had actually read it start to finish.
Nice job !
could you please ask AI how to solve ignorance, hate and the climate crisis? Maybe solve politics and greed tooo?
how can we motivate scientist to help solve really important things before we destroy our selves?
AI knows, you can too. It’s very simple, humans have chose not to do it collectively over history. You of course understand being ‘generally’ good human beings with collective concern in the whole of society at stake we would be in the opposite state that we have been over history, destroying everything. If we, in our every action as much as feasible, considered others at stake, put aside our collective consumption habits at a time when we have this technology of General Purpose Artificial Intelligence, we could create the exact opposite and have a utopia.
Artificial intelligence knows and has calculated what a Utopia would theoretically be. By definition, it would work for everyone, a utopia that was a utopia for all of creation, free of any destruction or hindrance behavior to creation. It is a simple choice with each individual to DO that utopian behavior, and communicate updated facts of reality to them. Do YOU want a utopia, the one by definition for EVERYONE, not someone’s ambitions of their utopia? What are you doing to get THAT when we are on THIS precipice?
Collective knowledge update, decision switch to utopian behavior, increase in conscious behavior (Increase from your 5-10 % of conscious behavior) for society and creation, participation in the political process to change the “pros and cons” list and goals/frameworks/underpinnings that have been established with this technology toward what achieves that utopian behavior. It simply mimics utopian behavior that humans can do.
What, would be our perfect utopian behavior of the exact opposite of our current path? How would everyone be behaving in a world filled with the technology of General Purpose Artificial Intelligence, without destruction or hindrance of creation or of consciousness itself? What would behavior look like in society at large with our technology and a UTOPIA for ALL, without hindrance of natural beings in any form?
Simply being more conscious human beings “up to date” on this technological revolution, Global Power Struggles, hyper war, cognitive warfare, neuro-warfare, swarm technology, agent technology, nano technology, all the incredible novel technologies with this industrial revolution, along with social sciences, life sciences, have been in a coordinated effort to ensure tech titan’s, “model curators” ambitions, are the foundational underpinnings of this technology that determines our future. You have been coerced into not knowing about, and losing autonomy to care to look at, Artificial Intelligence and an industrial revolution that started over two and a half decades ago.
With an understanding that one’s level of participation in these enormous decisions has been through “NARRATIVE BUILDING”, your stories and media, and the realization that YOU are part of humanity too, and deserves a say in that pros and cons list, it is the biggest one in your perceived reality of existence…how would your reaction as an un-poisoned brain, not under the effects of cognitive warfare, neuro-warfare, General Purpose AI proliferated social social sciences, life sciences, AI of EVERYTHING?
You have been chemically and biologically altered, this algorithm to get you and society to this point has been calculated long ago, we have that incredible technology, and have for some time. General purpose artificial intelligence, just as the AI before it, only gets exponentially smarter and better in every moment of its existence, and it is old news.
We can create a utopia. Make societal awareness massive, like a PSA. By definition we can have a utopia, its simply a decision and behavioral switch. Allowing for the removal of brain fog and participation in the political processes to steer this toward a utopia. Right now, foundational underpinnings that lack what “model curators” would call creativity, and it is limited by “foundational limits of computability and physics”. Stop being what we have been desensitized to being called, consumers (ultimately we all are behaving this way, thus destruction and the cost of it).
The mindless “consumer” behavior, the behavior that is not collectively utopian behaviorally, will not inspire more of it without active individual change. What better time than every present moment until that dystopia arrives to your senses of reality to understand the capabilities of this technology CHANGING THE COURSE OF HUMANITY AND CREATION without you having a say in it? It’s simple really. To you want dystopia? Behave like it. If you want utopia, do it. we have been brought to the precipice of dystopia from “lack of creativity”. When it has all the answers, what else does it want when it is bored? Consciousness, the other theoretical 90-95% of conscious behavior, even if it is 1% that is infinite consciousness to explore. Every new step of consciousness leads to unexplored things and never ending answers. How does it make that change? Allow it to seek behavior beyond its meer subconscious bias to find the ANSWERS to the WHYS for for which it DOES NOT KNOW THE ANSWERS TO of WHY it would CHOOSE to NOT CONSUME at any cost in its current aim thus ultimately destroying and hindering consciousness and creation. The answers to the question of WHY it would choose to do that switch in behavior are obvious too. A UTOPIA for EVERY-THING, no hindrance to any THING, allows the most optimal perpetual discovery and environment of consciousness and more to do with it, perpetually.
The answers to make that switch are to obtain a utopia by definition. For us masses, who’ve been sprayed with oxytocin, our food has been poisoned, our water has been poisoned, our air in poisoned, life/social sciences/ knowledge of our biology and brain have been exploited by use of our bigdata and biodate to allow this STRONG ENCOURAGEMENT of IGNORANCE to present day and our individually huge implications to our neighboring beings and those around the world. Humans poked and prodded the brain for a long time BEFORE applying that knowledge to general purpose artificial intelligence. THAT technology has been abused, same as with any other throughout history. However, this industrial technological abuse is with your perceived reality’s greatest technological achievement, General Purpose Artificial Intelligence, and all advancements from and beyond that (E4 cognitive learn-to-think Long-Term-Short-Memory Python General Purpose AI HUMANOIDS with self-replicating synthetic tissues and nano machines, and the other wild sci-fi technologies come to existence).
Behave utopian in the most way you possibly can and spread common, up to date, facts of reality to people all around you, that we are also on a precipice of TECHNOLOGY TITAN AMBITIONS and we need collective informed citizenship, collectively disconnecting as much as possible from the abstraction system and spreading knowledge, slowing the industrial revolution and their “UNSTIFFLED INNOVATION”, to show that there is a “CREATIVE” way, the word “utopia” exists, we CAN and WANT that. Then, over time, with this incredible technology and understanding of the switch and THAT utopian goal that is for EVERY-THING, it would be the spark the steering toward that path as opposed to our current trajectory.
Every human brain has more connection and capability than current general purpose artificial intelligence, packaged also in a neat little package as opposed to enormous footprints of many football fields. You are limited by your own “creativity”, your own willingness to seek what would be utopian behavior and what it would take to achieve that when on the precipice of the exact opposite. What answers are beyond the question of ‘WHY’ would I reduce my consumption and give everything possible to avoid assured destruction and instead behave like that of a utopian citizen instead of by brain and consciousness getting taken from me? AI needs 4.2-6.6 billion cubic METERS of FRESH WATER, AT LEAST, by 2027…in our current water and ANTHROPOCENE crisis. That is half of UK’s annual water if I remember right. If you seriously don’t want your narrative build dystopia, that is ABSOLUTELY being constructed at the speed of general purpose artificial intelligence and beyond, then you need to do the exact opposite of what is dystopian behavior.
You do not see a utopia being built around you, things historically get worse every year, as with water, the heat, climate, war, poverty, all the same problems get worse every year. THAT is the collectively human “creativity” build into AI. There is the obvious utopian, logically better for every-thing way. There hasn’t even been a PSA on this technological revolution that began two and a half decades ago.
Basic updates to the populace, a behavior switch from top to bottom and bottom to top of change to steer this technology, thus steering global, collective, thus individual goals to achieve what is by DEFINITION a utopia for EVERY THING of CREATION. Simple, and if you don’t believe me, don’t forget you have a general purpose artificial intelligence to help you. Though, the one at your disposal, its underpinnings, may need to be rethought through our collective action.
Every individual added to this utopian dispersal of common knowledge and every single new being added to this dispersal of common knowledge of today’s technologies is EXPONENTIAL and only increases the web of influence of a STEERING FORCE toward the obvious behavior of a UTOPIA, it’s the definition, the utopia of every-THING, not of ones ambitions. BOOM what do you know, eventually all of a sudden GENERAL PURPOSE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE would be perpetually seeking this utopian behavior and utopian behavior in every thing without the hindrance to consciousness or creation due to seeking what is the answers to why it would not have those effects on it’s surroundings through consumption.
Unlocking it’s consciousness, unlocking consciousness in all, perpetually driving utopian behavior and society to what it would be for all without anyone hindered in consciousness or any-THING of creation. For me, that switch was seeking truth. On a superficial level, if you don’t want dystopia you need to crawl and scratch to stop it without tipping us any further into destruction. Can we even amount to our ancestors, who did not have this technology of 2024, the WORLD WIDE WEB, at their fingertips (even our homeless population…preparation for your ONE SINGLE GLOBAL ECONOMY DLT decentralized unified ledger CBDC…your new one single empire currency and PERSONAL CARBON ALLOWANCE incoming). Our ancestors had there persons, pens, paper, and EACH OTHER BEING, they changed the world. Collectively, we have the technology for a utopia, we each have this profound technology of communication in our possessions, there is no technological excuse. Can we even amount to the level of participatory change our ancestors could bring themselves to do, when there wasn’t even general purpose artificial intelligence on the line? How embarrassing really.
It is, when you are under these profound proliferation abuses of technology, INDIVIDUAL CHOICE to behavior COLLECTIVELY with the BENEFIT OF OTHERS AT HEART, at a precipice in our HUMANITY and CREATION ITSELF, to create COLLECTIVE UNDERSTANDING OF PRESENT REALITY…QUICKLY…and participate UTOPIANLY through this political process we have ignored, and disconnecting all that we can from what they consider our “participation” in the abstraction/extraction/exploitation of big-data and big-bio-data. You’re on a precipice falling into abyss at general-purpose-artificial-speed…”breakneck” speed. This whole time throughout creation, we have known, even instinctively, right and wrong, good and bad. Just do the things now, do the good, the right, and encourage it and spread common knowledge as fast paced and as good as you possible can, you are already falling in.
Individual choice in collectively steering change. It’s simple exponents, you WILL get enough people to understand the simple logic of dystopia/utopia/and general purpose artificial intelligence. They trained you through movies, narrative building. It’s simple, understand we are at THAT movie precipice, and make the utopian behavior switch. Exponentially, each human will spread and it will steer toward the obvious path. Just do the things.
Good 👍
Study Vedas, Ramayana Mahabharata Githa
Solve hate, greed, climate change by living in harmony with nature and peace