Artificial intelligence based algorithms uncover two new planets

Artificial intelligence based data analysis has numerous applications in the fields of healthcare, financial services, IT services, physics research, and so on. But astronomers have successfully used it to hunt for new planets. While the search for exoplanets isn’t new, the use of artificial intelligence based search algorithms is quite new. It has allowed astronomers to discover several stars and planets hidden in existing observations and data compiled from space and ground-based telescopes. A similar technique was used by astronomers at the University of Texas in Austin to uncover the existence of two new planets.

The Kepler space telescope has gathered mountain loads of data from its years of observations and did manage to pinpoint several planets orbiting numerous stars in the Milky Way galaxy. However, not every part of the sky that was observed yielded desired results, partly because of the sheer amount of data to be analyzed. But the astronomers at the University of Texas developed a unique algorithm to sift through all the data and discerned two previously undiscovered exoplanets.

Both planets are relatively close to their star, located in the constellation of Aquarius, making their surface extremely hot and uninhabitable. One of them is located about 1,300 light years away and the other is 1,230 light years away. The astronomers claimed that the new algorithm can be used to analyze the entire data set gathered by Kepler, consisting of about 3, 00,000.