According to techcrunch, Google and NASA announced the discovery of a new planet in the kepler-90 system through machine learning technology. Scientists applied the neural network to the data collected by Kepler telescope and found the eighth planet of the system for the first time. In all known planetary systems, this discovery makes the number of known planets in the kepler-90 system comparable to that in the solar system.
The newly discovered planet is called kepler-90i. Its signal is weaker than that of the planets that are usually recognized by traditional means. Google's technology also found kepler-80g, the smallest planet in the kepler-80 system.
Kepler-90i is a hot rock planet. It is the smallest of the eight planets in kepler-90 system. Its orbit is very close to kepler-90. For it, it takes only 14 days to orbit its star, which means you have a birthday every two weeks.
Google explained in a conference call that when it studied the data collected by Kepler telescope over the past four years, the tools it used were actually similar to those used to identify cats and dogs in photos.
The kepler-90 system is slightly larger, hotter, and more massive than the solar system, but many other aspects are similar to the solar system. Kepler-90i is the smallest planet in the system and probably not suitable for survival. NASA says its surface is covered with rocks, with a surface temperature of about 426.7 degrees Celsius. But it also provides a key piece of evidence for the theory that planets near stars are generally smaller and have more rocks on the surface than planets far from them. Its revolution period is only 14 days, while the earth's revolution period is 365 days.
The kepler-90 system may have more planets, but it's not known. Kepler is just looking for planets very close to the stars. NASA says there are likely to be more planets in the unseen area.
In order to achieve these discoveries, Google's AI technology has screened only 670 stars out of the data of about 200000 planets and found two new exoplanets. This means that if more data is studied, the possibility of more discoveries is very high.