Researchers Find New Exoplanet Using Artificial Intelligence

On Thursday, NASA announced the discovery of an eighth exoplanet circling Kepler-90, a sun-like star with its own planetary system. The discovery tied Kepler-90 to our Solar System.

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The discovery of Kepler-90i was possible using artificial intelligence technology from Google.

"(It was) an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers 'learn,'" NASA explained in a press release. 

"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."

Researchers Christopher Shallue, a senior software engineer with Google’s research team, and Andrew Vanderburg, a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow and astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin, were responsible for developing the artificial intelligence capable of sifting through data obtained by the Kepler space telescope, launched in March 2009. 

Jessie Dotson, Kepler’s project scientist at NASA, said she is certain that this discovery signals similar ones to come in the future.

"I’m sure there are more firsts in the data waiting for people to find them," she said.    

NASA will host a Reddit Ask Me Anything at 3 p.m. EST today on this discovery.