The EU supports scientists, researchers and innovators in pushing the boundaries of knowledge. It has invested almost €23 billion across 78,244 research and industry organisations in France. Discover some of the groundbreaking work in sectors such as astrophysics and seismology.
Project examples
Many mysteries remain about the origins of stars, despite significant progress in space research in recent years. Among the challenges has been seeing how mass is distributed within clusters of stars during their formation. Researchers gained insights by training a neural network to aid identification by singling out objects in images.
Apart from finding further clues on star formation, one of their most exciting discoveries was around 70 to 170 free-floating planets unbound to any star.
Geophysicists have sought for many decades to predict earthquakes, but success in this endeavour has largely proved elusive. To gain a better understanding of the related physical processes deep within the earth, researchers used AI to analyse a huge set of data from high-quality seismic observations saved in large data banks.
Apart from improving learning on the evolution of faults and processes taking place underground, the project developed a technique to help detect and locate small earthquakes.