Teen Finds 1.5 Million Space Objects NASA Never Saw

While most high school seniors stress about college applications, Matteo Paz was busy rewriting astronomy history one algorithm at a time.

The California teen taught himself to build a machine learning program that spotted 1.5 million space objects hiding in plain sight within NASA's archived telescope data. These weren't random blips, they were real astronomical objects like binary stars and quasars that had never been identified before.

Paz started his project through the Caltech Planet Finder Academy, a program that gives students hands-on experience with real astronomy challenges. He got access to data from NASA's NEOWISE telescope, which had been collecting observations for over a decade while hunting asteroids and comets.

The dataset was massive. Over 200 billion rows of recorded observations sat waiting in NASA's archives.

Instead of analyzing a small sample like most students would, Paz spent six weeks building an algorithm that could process everything. His program detected tiny light changes invisible to the human eye, spotting the flickering and pulsing patterns of distant objects that traditional methods had overlooked.

His mentor, IPAC senior scientist Davy Kirkpatrick, worked alongside him to refine the approach. They started with a small slice of sky to test the concept, then expanded the algorithm to scan the entire NEOWISE archive.

The results stunned the astronomy community. Paz's work was peer-reviewed and published in The Astronomical Journal in 2024, a rare achievement for any researcher, let alone a high school student.

He also won $250,000 in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, one of the most prestigious science competitions for young researchers.

Why This Inspires

Paz's discovery shows how fresh perspectives can unlock answers hiding in plain sight. Professional astronomers had access to the same data for years, but it took a curious teenager with coding skills to see what was possible.

His algorithm could potentially analyze other massive telescope datasets, like those from the Kepler telescope or the upcoming Roman Space Telescope. What started as a student project might become a standard tool for astronomical discovery.

The breakthrough also highlights how artificial intelligence is transforming space exploration. NASA is already using similar AI solutions to improve the James Webb telescope's ability to discover unknown planets at unprecedented resolutions.

Paz proved that age doesn't limit what you can contribute to science, just curiosity and the willingness to try something new.

The universe just got 1.5 million objects more interesting, thanks to one determined teenager with a laptop.