WHAT’S THE STORY?
NASA has announced that it has found a new planet in a solar system filled with as many planets as our own, all orbiting a star which has a distinct resemblance to our own sun.
Furthermore, the solar system around the Kepler-90 star looks very much like ours, with rocky planets nearer the star and gas giants further out.
The system had already been found back in 2014, but the hot and rocky planet now designated Kepler-90i was missed during the first examination of the data sent back by the Kepler space telescope.
The new discovery shows that Kepler-90 has eight planets, as with our solar system, and though it is highly unlikely that any of those planets have life forms on them, the discovery is already being seen as increasing the chance of finding extraterrestrial life.
HOW DID THEY FIND IT?
IF by “they” you mean humans, forget it. This discovery was a triumph for computers who were put to work on analysing data from the 150,000 – you read that correctly – stars found by the Kepler space telescope in just four years, in one tiny stretch of space.
No human eye and mind could process that amount of information entirely accurately but Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) scientists lent a hand to Nasa, training computers to check what people could not.
By examining distant stars – Kepler-90 is 12,500 light years away, meaning we are seeing its light sent out around 10,500 BCE – and checking on the tell-tale signs of planets as they orbit around the stars, Google’s AI is able to process information to indicate the presence of planets.
Only on these planets, or perhaps on asteroids or moons orbiting them, will life be found.
HOW MANY PLANETS DO WE KNOW ABOUT AND HOW MANY COULD SUSTAIN LIFE?
THE answer to the first question is easy – since Kepler started looking for “exoplanets”, as planets outside our own solar system are known,
Nasa has discovered 2525 such planets. That sheer amount of planets has changed scientists’ views on whether we will discover life elsewhere in the Cosmos – many think it is now a question of when, not if.
Back in 2013, based on a rigid analysis of Kepler data, Nasa stated that there could be as many as 40 billion such planets. Of those, some 11 billion could be orbiting Sun-like stars.
The nearest so far found is in the system of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our own Sun. It was given the highly romantic name of “b”, as in Proxima Centauri b.
Logic dictates that, at some point, Nasa will find thousands if not millions of planets that are in the so-called habitable zone such as our own Earth occupies – near enough to a star to have a star’s heat and far enough away for water to survive.
Not for nothing are such celestial bodies nicknamed Goldilocks planets, with conditions “just right” for life.
SO WHY HAVEN’T ‘THEY’ BEEN IN TOUCH WITH US?
THE problem with space is that it is just so vast. Even travelling at the speed of light, it would take a spaceship four years to travel to our nearest exoplanets.
Nor are we able to determine how many planets have exactly the conditions that sustain human life.
Nevertheless, the famous Drake Equation devised by American astronomer and astrophysicist Dr Frank Drake back in 1961 tells us that there is a 1 in 60 billion chance that Earth is the only planet ever to have sustained intelligent life.
They are out there – we just can’t find them. Yet.
WHY IS THIS NEW PLANET SO IMPORTANT?
IT is perhaps not the planet itself but the process by which it was found.
At a stroke the computers have greatly increased the ability of astronomers to discover exoplanets, which in turn massively increases their chances of finding life elsewhere in the universe.
Machine learning, which allows computers to learn for themselves after being given only some programming by humans, is becoming an increasingly important tool for scientists in their study of outer space.
That said, it can’t all be done by robots alone.
As senior Google AI software engineer Chris Shallue said: “What we’ve developed here is a tool to help astronomers have more impact.
“It’s a way to increase the productivity of astronomers. It certainly won’t replace them at all.”
We humans are very pleased about that.
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