Finding the New from the Old

Makes the case that you can use older data to make useful conclusions.  Though in our experience the required meta data was often not available.    Physics/astronomy is at least often based on some strong science foundations.

AI Identifies 50 New Planets From Old NASA Data
Jessie Yeung
August 26, 2020

Machine learning artificial intelligence (AI) developed by astronomers and computer scientists at the U.K.'s University of Warwick found 50 new planets by mining old data from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The researchers educated the algorithm on data collected by the Kepler Space Telescope, teaching it to differentiate real planets from false positives. The AI was then tasked to analyze old datasets of planetary candidates, in which it discovered the 50 previously unknown exoplanets. Warwick's David Armstrong said this is the first time machine learning has been used to rank planetary candidates in a probabilistic framework, and the research suggests the AI could "validate thousands of unseen candidates in seconds."... '