Stanford researchers have developed an artificial intelligence-based tool – dubbed SandAI – that can reveal the history of quartz sand grains going back hundreds of millions of years.
Stanford researchers have developed an artificial intelligence-based tool – dubbed SandAI – that can reveal the history of quartz sand grains going back hundreds of millions of years. With SandAI, researchers can tell with high accuracy if wind, rivers, waves, or glacial movements shaped and deposited motes of sand.
The tool gives researchers a unique window into the past for geological and archeological studies, especially for eras and environments where few other clues, such as fossils, are preserved through time. SandAI’s approach, called microtextural analysis, can also help with modern-day forensic investigations into illegal sand mining and related issues.
“Working on sedimentary deposits that haven’t been disturbed or deformed feels about as close as you can get to being in a time machine – you’re seeing exactly what was on the surface of Earth, even hundreds of millions of years ago. SandAI adds another layer of detail to the information we can pull from them,” said Michael Hasson, a PhD candidate with Mathieu Lapôtre, an assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Hasson is lead author of a new study demonstrating the tool, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read more at: Stanford University
The SandAI neural network was trained using modern quartz sand and can help unravel the histories encoded in ancient rocks. Shown here are ancient ripples formed by water currents being reworked by modern wind-blown sediment in Oman. Photo Credit: Mathieu Lapôtre
