Page 28 - aruba-today-20171216

A28 SCIENCE
Saturday 16 december 2017

Eighth planet found in faraway solar system, matching ours

By MARCIA DUNN served by Kepler.
AP Aerospace Writer In all, more than 3,560 exo-
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. planets have been con-
(AP) — A record-tying firmed to date — two-thirds
eighth planet has been of them spotted by the
found in a faraway solar 2009-launched Kepler —
system, matching our own with another approximate-
in number. ly 4,500 candidates await-
Even more amazing, ma- ing verification.
chines and not humans It will be up to more ad-
made the discovery. NASA vanced telescopes, like
joined with Google on the James Webb Space
Thursday to announce the Telescope targeted for
finding. launch in 2019, to study
This eighth planet orbits the the atmospheres of these
star known as Kepler-90. distant worlds and sniff out
Like Earth, this new planet, any traces of possible life,
Kepler-90i, is the third rock Vanderburg noted.
from its sun. But it’s much Shallue said Google plans
closer to its sun — orbit- his illustration made available by NASA shows a comparison of the planets in the solar system to release all the code
ing in just 14 days — and and those orbiting the star Kepler-90. needed for someone to
therefore a scorching 800 Associated Press join the exoplanet search,
degrees Fahrenheit (427 using a basic home com-
Celsius) at the surface. In 5.8 trillion miles. nals are very weak,” said to enable machines to dis- puter and the publicly
fact, all eight planets are Google used data collect- Christopher Shallue, a se- tinguish between pictures available Kepler data.
scrunched up around this ed by NASA’s keen planet nior software engineer at of cats and dogs. No specialized hardware
star, orbiting closer than hunter, the Kepler Space Google in Mountain View, Besides identifying Kepler- should be needed, he said.
Earth does to our sun. Telescope, to develop the California. 90i, the machine-learning Neither NASA nor Google
This is the only eight-plan- machine-learning com- NASA astrophysicist Jessie program also confirmed expect to put astronomers
et solar system found like puter program. It focuses Dotson, the Kepler project an exoplanet missed by out of business.
ours — so far — tying for on weak planetary signals scientist, is “so excited to astronomers in yet another Shallue sees this as a tool
the most planets observed — so feeble and numerous see where this goes next.” solar system: Kepler-80g, to help astronomers have
around a single star. it would take humans ages “Who knows what po- the sixth planet in that par- more impact and increase
Our solar system had nine to examine. tential insights might be ticular solar system. their productivity.
planets until Pluto was de- While machine learning gained,” she said. Shallue and Vanderburg “It certainly will not replace
moted to a dwarf planet has been used before in Shallue teamed up with plan to keep up the hunt, them at all,” he assured
in 2006 by the Internation- the search for exoplanets astronomer Andrew Van- using the program to scour reporters.q
al Astronomical Union, a — planets beyond our so- derburg of the University of the 150,000-plus stars ob-
decision that still stands. lar system — it’s believed Texas at Austin to develop
Some astronomers, how- to be the first time an ar- the program. They essen-
ever, suspect there could tificial neural network like tially trained a computer to
be a large ninth planet out this has been used to find a identify exoplanets based
there: an elusive Planet new world. on Kepler’s observations in
X the size of Neptune but “This is a really exciting dis- changing stellar brightness
much farther out. covery, and we consider it — the subtle, fleeting dip in
The Kepler-90 system also to be a successful proof of a star’s brightness when a
could have a ninth planet concept to be using neural planet passes in front of it.
or more, according to the networks to identify plan- The two used a technique
researchers. It is 2,545 light- ets, even in challenging similar to what had been
years away; a light-year is situations where the sig- previously used by others