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Report #35 - December 2017

A Second Solar System?

For four years, after its launch in 2009, NASA's Spacecraft Kepler has been observing a small fragment of sky, scanning the 150,000 stars in the area for any distinct dimming from a potential planet passing by. Since then, the spacecraft has identified about 2,525 planets from its colossal amount of data. With not all fluctuations in a star's light necessarily indicating a presence of a planet, it is no easy job to swift through mounds of data and weed out stars with possible planets from stars with say starspots, stellar partners, or other celestial objects. 

The solution? A neural network. Neural networks, with the right training, can analyze data and identify/classify things, like a planet dimming its parent star from an object simply passing by. Google AI's Chris Shallue took up the task of training such a neural network to do just that, the machine eventually having a 96% success rate in identifying planets. 

The Kepler-90 System

It is through this very network that Kepler-90i was discovered in the Kepler-90 planetary system, initially going unnoticed because of its weak signal. Originally known to be a seven planet system, the Kepler-90 system now rivals our own system with eight planets orbiting a single star. Moreover, according to NASA, "the Kepler-90 planets have a similar configuration to our solar system with small planets found orbiting close to their star, and the larger planets found father away," a clue that perhaps the outer planets in the Kepler-90 system formed the same way the outer planets in our solar system did: "in a cooler part of the solar system, where water ice can stay solid and clump together to make bigger and bigger planets." But that's as far as the similarities go. Kepler-90's eight planets are squished so close to their parent star, a star slightly larger and hotter than ours, that the outermost planet is roughly the same distance from it as Earth is from the Sun! The planet that would be the third closest to the parent star, Kepler-90i, is not only bigger than Earth, but scorching, its average temperature calculated to be 800°F. A single orbit would only take two weeks! Nothing compared to Earth's 365 days. 

So the Kepler-90 system may not include any candidates for potential life, but it's believed the planetary system may have more planets waiting to be discovered. That neural network system still has plenty of work to do. 

An artist's interpretation of the Kepler-90 System compared to our solar system. 

Image Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Wendy Stenzel,

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/ames/kepler-90-system-planet-sizes

SOURCES:

This report was a summary of the following articles. Click the links for more information: 

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/eight-alien-planets-found-nasa-kepler-google-space-science/

NASA/Ames Research Center/Wendy Stenzel

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/ames/kepler-90-system-planet-sizes

Image:

NASA/Ames Research Center/Wendy Stenzel

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/ames/kepler-90-system-planet-sizes

https://newatlas.com/nasa-star-system-large-planetary-system/52628/

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