NASA has announced the discovery of two new exoplanets thanks to Kepler and the use of artificial intelligence developed by Google.
At the end of February this year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, announced one of the most important findings: the discovery of a planetary system 40 light years from Earth. Of the seven exoplanets that made up the system called Trappist-1three were considered very similar to Earth.
NASA has again surprised us and has announced an important discovery made thanks to the Kepler space telescope and Google’s artificial intelligence. Thanks to machine learning techniques developed by Google, it is possible to demonstrate new ways of analyzing data through Kepler.
The Kepler mission can already be considered a success for its findings. This is a space mission launched by NASA in 2009 with the purpose of finding new worlds outside the solar system with the possibility of housing life. Detect terrestrial, rocky and earth-sized planets around other stars.
Since its commissioning, Kepler has found more than 4,000 worlds. For example, in May 2016 the mission’s scientific team announced the discovery of 1,284 new planets. Another astronomical landmark as Trappist-1. On this occasion, Google participates in the mission developing artificial intelligence to analyze the data that Kepler collects and sends.
Two new exoplanets discovered
Last Thursday NASA released a new statement: the discovery, thanks to the use of artificial intelligence, of two new exoplanets. Those responsible for the investigation have been Christopher Shallue and Andrew Vanderburg, who have trained a computer with artificial intelligence to learn how to identify Kepler-registered exoplanets.
Source: NASA’s Ames Research Center
This model is able to distinguish patterns caused by real planets from those caused by other objects. For now, the system has only analyzed 670 stars out of the 200,000 known, so there may still be a large number of undiscovered exoplanets, but this new technology could boost the discoveries of great cosmic treasures in the coming years.
On this occasion, the exoplanets discovered were Kepler 80g and Kepler 90i. The latter, as they have highlighted, is 30% larger than earth, its surface temperature is 426ºC, and makes a full orbit around its star in 14 days. In addition, it is the eighth discovered exoplanet that revolves around the star Kepler 90. Meanwhile, the other discovered exoplanet, Kepler 80g and four of its neighboring planets, it is the size of the Earth and forms what is called a resonant chain where the planets are blocked by their mutual gravity.
According to data collected by Kepler, in four years 35,000 possible planetary signals have appeared, although the weakest are often lost. For this reason, the researchers decided to use new technologies applied to their mission. By testing the effectiveness of Google’s AI model, the system identified 96% of the time when the signals received corresponded to planets and which did not.
The use of AI and machine learning is essential for processing large amounts of data and, applied to the mysteries of space, may be able to discover planets that, until now, went unnoticed.
The space race continues to increase, and even the United States government has announced a new space strategy that aims to send astronauts back to the Moon and pursue human exploration on Mars. Will it become a reality in the coming years?
