High-School Student Discovers 1.5 Million Space Objects
Matteo Paz, an 18-year-old California high-school student, used a machine-learning pipeline to analyze NASA's NEOWISE archival data and identified over 1.5 million previously unidentified space objects, in work published in The Astronomical Journal in 2024 and awarded the $250,000 Regeneron Science Talent Search prize. Paz processed roughly 200 billion detection rows to detect faint variable sources, suggesting the pipeline could scale to other telescopes' archives.
Scoring Rationale
Significant peer-reviewed discovery and reusable ML pipeline drive the score; limited broader methodological detail reduces scope slightly.
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Sources
- Read OriginalThis High Schooler Found 1.5 Million Unknown Space Objects That NASA Missedbgr.com
