Google’s artificial intelligence finds two new exoplanets missed by human eyes

Two new exoplanets have been discovered thanks to NASA’s collaboration with Google’s artificial intelligence (AI). One of those in today’s announcement is an eighth planet – Kepler-90i – found orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler-90. This makes it the first system discovered with an equal number of planets to our own Solar system.

A mere road trip away, at 2,545 light-years from Earth, Kepler-90i orbits its host star every 14.4 Earth days, with a sizzling surface temperature similar to Venus of 426°C.

The new exoplanets are added to the growing list of known worlds found orbiting other stars.

This new Solar system rival provides evidence that a similar process occurred within Kepler-90 that formed our very own planetary neighbourhood: small terrestrial worlds close to the host star, and larger gassy planets further away. But to say the system is a twin of our own Solar system is a stretch.

Read more: Exoplanet discovery by an amateur astronomer shows the power of citizen science

The entire Kepler-90 system of eight planets would easily fit within Earth’s orbit of the Sun. All eight planets, bar Kepler-90h, would be too hostile for life, lying outside the so-called habitable zone.

Evidence also suggests that planets within the Kepler-90 system started out farther apart, much like our own Solar system. Some form of migration occurred, dragging this system inwards, producing the orbits we see in Kepler-90 today.

Google’s collaboration with NASA’s space telescope Kepler mission has now opened up new and exciting opportunities into AI helping with scientific discoveries.

So how exactly did Google’s AI discover these planets? And what sort of future discoveries can this technology provide?

Traditionally, software developers program computers to perform a particular task, from playing your favourite cat video, to determining exoplanetary signals from space based telescopes such as NASA’s Kepler Mission.

These programs are executed to serve a single purpose. Using code intended for cat videos to hunt exoplanets in light curves would lead to some very interesting, yet false, results.

Googles’s AI is programmed rather differently, using machine learning. In machine learning, AI is trained through artificial neural networks – somewhat replicating our brain’s biological neural networks – to perform tasks like reading this article. It then learns from its mistakes, becoming more efficient at its particular task.