It seems that now anyone can search for exoplanets by sitting in their house. As per the recent report, the tech giant Google has brought its alien planet-hunting artificial intelligence (AI) program publicly. Anyone can use that AI with NASA’s Kepler data to find our never-before-seen planets.
In December 2017, the scientists using the data provided by the Kepler Space Telescope detected two new exoplanets. But, the truth is that it was Google’s neural network that helped the scientist to discover the planets. The AI detected the patterns which can’t be noticed by any human scientists.
So, now Google is developing the code used to run the AI open source program and will be available for everyone. Informing more about this Senior Software Engineer at Google Brain Team, Chris Shallue stated, “We hope this release will prove a useful stag for developing models for NASA missions, which includes a K2 mission, the second Kepler mission and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission.”
In 2009, to find out alien planets, NASA launched the Kepler mission. But the stars that the Kepler detected were situated too far away and it was difficult to study them directly. So, in the end, scientists stated that there is a planet circling a distant star. Kepler records every drop-in light. It normally happens when a planet goes in front of a star. In four years the Kepler captured more than 150,000 data points of such light drop which now can be analyzed by the scientists. However, for the scientists, the data were too much, so they pick only 30,000 signals for study and while analyzing they discovered around 2,500 exoplanets. It is now expected that remaining 120,000 signals may have more stars and exoplanets.
As per the report, the AI algorithm is now can be downloaded for free from Github. The users can also use the Kepler’s data for free of cost. People will now get some idea of how a neural network works.
