NASA discovers record-tying eighth planet via Google AI
December 15, 2017
Researchers from the US space agency and the tech giant have taught a computer to review massive amounts of Kepler Telescope star data. The discovery puts a distant solar system's planetary count on par with our own.
US Space Agency NASA announced on Thursday that applying artificial intelligence to Kepler telescope star data uncovered a new planet in a distant solar system, bringing the system's total planet count to eight and making it the largest known such system outside of our own.
"Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star," NASA said in a statement. Previously, earth's solar system had the largest known number of planets.
The newly discovered planet, which has been named Kepler-90i, circles the Kepler-90 star, which is some 2,545 light-years away from Earth. One light-year equals about 9.5 trillion kilometers (5.8 trillion miles.) The rocky planet is much close to the Kepler-90 star than earth is to our sun and orbits it once every 14.4 days.
"The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system," said Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomic researcher at the University of Texas at Austin who worked on the discovery.
"You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer."
NASA estimated the planet's surface temperature to be around 426 degrees Celsius (800 Fahrenheit) and said it likely was inhospitable to life.
Many solar systems that have seven or fewer planets have been discovered, but Kepler-90 is the first to have eight planets, like our own.Image: NASA/Ames Research Center/W. Stenzel/The University of Texas at Austin/A. Vanderburg
Google AI teams up with NASA
Kepler-90i was discovered by training a computer to scan massive amounts of star data collected by NASA's Kepler space telescope, which has scanned more than 150,000 stars since its launch in 2009.
Vanderburg and Google AI software engineer Christopher Shallue taught a computer to review some 35,000 planetary signals that the Kepler telescope had collected and identify when the transmitted signals had dimmed. This indicates when a planet passes, or "transits," in front of a star. The computer then found weak transit signals that had previously been missed and that pointed to the existence of the eighth planet, Kepler-90i.
Shallue said he became interested in applying Google's machine learning technology to astronomy when he learned that "the Kepler mission had collected so much data that it was impossible for scientists to examine it all manually."
"Machine learning really shines when there is too much data for humans to examine for themselves," he added.
While machine learning has been applied before to the Kepler telescope's data, it is believed to be the first time that the technology has unearthed a new world.
The researchers' application also identified a sixth planet in Kepler-80, a different solar system.
The Kepler space telescope has discovered some 5,000 planets since its launch in 2009Image: picture alliance/dpa/epa/NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
Vanderburg and Shallue's findings will be published in The Astronomical Journal. They intend to continue applying the machine learning technology to Kepler star data and believe more eight-planet solar systems will probably be found.
According to AP, Shallue also said Google planned to make public the code needed to do searches for planets outside of our solar system using a home computer and the publically available Kepler data.
Earth-like planets and other celestial discoveries
Astronomers have found a new Earth-like planet in our neighboring solar system, Proxima Centauri. We take a look at this and other discoveries from Earth- and space-based telescopes.
Image: L. Calçada/ESO
Another planet Earth?
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has discovered a third Earth-like planet orbiting the star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun at four light years away. A planet is considered Earth-like if scientists suspect it provides conditions that could make life theoretically conceivable, such as a certain temperature range, gravity, an atmosphere and the possibility of water.
Image: L. Calçada/ESO
Discovery via the Very Large Telescope
Astronomers discovered the planet through the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile's Atacama Desert. Proxima d is the lightest of the three planets discovered around our closest star. ESO researchers also discovered the somewhat larger Proxima b, but with a different telescope supported by the planet-search instrument HARPS.
Image: ESO/G. Lombardi
Spaceship Kepler: On the hunt for planets
Many Earth-like planets haven't been discovered by telescopes situated on Earth but by ones in space. Spaceship Kepler has been searching for Earth-like planets since 2009. Besides meeting the physical conditions, they must also consist of rock or metal compounds and have a solid surface, in contrast to gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn.
Image: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T Pyle
A longer distance away
Exoplanet Kepler-186f is located 500 light years away from us, orbiting red dwarf Kepler-186. That small sun has only about 4% of the energy of our sun. Kepler-186f orbits Kepler-186 at a perfectly calibrated distance: Water would neither freeze nor evaporate on the planet, which is a precondition for life. But the question of whether there is water on Kepler-186f at all remains unanswered.
There are no detailed pictures of exoplanets, just artistic representations like this one of Kepler-186f. But not even a drawing exists of another recently discovered exoplanet, Kepler-438b, which orbits a sun-like star about 470 light years away from Earth and is just slightly larger than our planet. NASA published the discovery on January 6, 2014.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Ocean-covered giants?
This artist's drawing of Kepler-62e shows a planet covered by ocean. Scientists agree that Earth-like exoplanets most likely have large oceans. Kepler-62e can be found in the constellation of Lyra, located 1,200 light years away from us. And its mother star, Kepler-62, has yet another Earth-like planet ...
Image: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
The Kepler-62 brothers
... Kepler-62f, whose diameter is 1.4 times that of Earth. The Earth-like planet is located a bit further out in its solar system than its larger brother Kepler-62e, which is 1.61 times as big as Earth. Both may be suited for life. Researchers believe that the existence of rocks and water is plausible.
Image: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
Orbiting two suns
Even though Kepler-16b is located on the edge of an inhabitable zone, it probably doesn't host any life. This is a pity, because the planet orbits two suns — every morning and evening, its inhabitants would be able to observe two sunrises and sunsets! Too bad Kepler-16b is most likely a gas planet, composed of rock and ice — not good for beings needing to breathe fresh air.
Image: imago/UPI Photo
The Hubble Space Telescope offers many perspectives
The Pillars of Creation are located in the Eagle Nebula about 7,000 light years away. The joint ESA and NASA Hubble Space Telescope took new pictures of the formation through an infrared light spectrum. The pillars are home to numerous bright and young stars, including entire solar systems.
Image: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team
Lights on!
The same picture through visible light: more fog, but also more color. Dust and gas in the pillars are pierced by radiation originating from young stars. These new Hubble Telescope pictures enable researchers to monitor changes in the formation over a longer period of time.
Image: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team
A star is born
NGC 4102 is a LINER galaxy: a low-ionization nuclear emission-line region. This means it emits ionized radiation, like roughly one-third of all galaxies. At its center, there is a sun-burst region, where young stars seem to be born. It has a diameter of about 1,000 light years. Scientists don't understand the exact processes in the center yet.
Image: ESA/Hubble, NASA and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast)
A messier cluster
This cluster of stars, located in the northern part of the Hercules formation, is called Messier 92. On dark nights with clear skies, we can see it from Earth with bare eyes. The cloud includes roughly 330,000 stars, most of which consist of hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements like metals are rare.
Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA/Gilles Chapdelaine
The best view of Andromeda
The original version of this photo of the Andromeda Galaxy is 1.5 billion pixels in size — the most detailed picture ever taken of that galaxy. It includes 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters. To watch it in its entire beauty, one would need 600 HD-TV screens. The ends of the picture are 40,000 light years apart.
Image: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton (University of Washington, USA), B. F. Williams (University of Washington, USA), L. C. Johnson (University of Washington, USA), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler
