Artificial intelligence just discovered two new exoplanets
This is what happens when you turn machine learning loose on the cosmos.
By Rob Verger
A machine learning technique called a neural network has identified two new exoplanets in our galaxy, NASA scientists and a Google software engineer announced today, meaning that researchers now know about two new worlds thanks to the power of artificial intelligence.
Discovering new exoplanets — as planets outside our solar system are called — is a relatively common occurrence, and a key instrument that scientists use to identify them is the Kepler Space Telescope, which has already spotted a confirmed 2,525 exoplanets. But what’s novel about this announcement is that researchers used a AI system to spot these two new worlds, now dubbed Kepler-90i and Kepler-80g. The planet known as 90i is especially interesting to astronomers, as it brings the total number of known planets orbiting that star to eight, a tie with our own system. The average temperature on 90i is thought to be quite balmy: more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Just as exoplanet discoveries are common, so too are neural networks, which is software that learns from data (as opposed to a program that have had rules programmed into it). Neural networks power language…
