ALIEN MATTER
NASA discovers eighth alien planet in only solar system as big as ours – using Google tech
A press conference live steamed today boosted hopes of extraterrestrial life as it revealed the new findings from the Kepler telescope
HOPES of extraterrestrial life have today been boosted as NASA announced it has discovered a new planet in a far off solar system.
The space agency live streamed a press conference from Washington D.C. to announce a new discovery by its Kepler telescope.
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They revealed the alien hunting project found an eighth planet - called Kepler-90i - proving that stars can have their own solar systems.
It followed years of studying 15,000 stars every minute of every day, all year round.
Nasa hailed it "a really successful discovery" - with hopes that future research will find even more unknown planets.
Kelper has been combing the stars for habitable planets and alien life since 2009.
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A NASA spokesman said: "Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth.
"The planet was discovered in data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.
The newly-discovered Kepler-90i – a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days – was found using machine learning from Google.
"Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers “learn.”
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"In this case, computers learned to identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded signals from planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets."
Members of the public were allowed to ask question of the researchers via Twitter using the hashtag during the .
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Kepler is NASA’s most successful planet discoverer, having identified over 2,500 exoplanets in its two missions over eight years.
It found the majority of them on its first mission, between 2009 and 2013, but has continued to find more in its extended K2 mission, which began in 2014.
Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division in Washington said: “Just as we expected, there are exciting discoveries lurking in our archived Kepler data, waiting for the right tool or technology to unearth them.
“This finding shows that our data will be a treasure trove available to innovative researchers for years to come.”
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Until Kepler, scientists had no idea there were so many planets beyond our solar system. Thanks to its discoveries, scientists now believe there to be at least one planet orbiting every star in the sky.
Among Kelper's discoveries is "Earth 2.0" which it located in 2014.
The deep space planet is a similar size to our world and gets roughly the same amount of light from its sun.
Boffins aren't sure if it has any life but believes that plants from Earth would survive if transferred there.
The Kelper telescope
The Kepler has spotted thousands of exoplanets since its launch in 2009.
So far 30 planets less than twice the size of Earth now known to orbit within the habitable zones of their stars.
Knowledge of these planets, which potentially have the conditions needed for life, helps NASA guide its future research into extraterrestrial life.
In total, Kepler has found around 5,000 unconfirmed 'candidate' exoplanets, with a further 2,500 'confirmed' exoplanets that scientists have since shown to be real.
It has located 30 distant Earth-sized planets with an orbit within the habitable zone of a star, meaning they could have surface water.
Before the announcement, NASA in a press release said: “The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google.
“Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence and demonstrates new ways of analysing Kepler data.”
While its primary mission is to look for exoplanets (a planet which orbits a star outside our solar system), it is also tasked with “studying young stars, supernovae and other cosmic phenomena”, according to NASA.
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