NASA, Experts Find Buried Alien Signals In Kepler Spacecraft Data

By using AI to sift through Kepler's data, scientists were able to find hidden alien planet signals.

Astronomers at the University of Texas at Austin, in partnership with Google, used an AI to help find planet signals hidden in data sets of the Kepler space telescope K2 extended mission archive. The technique gives hope to scientists when it comes to identifying many other planets that could not be identified through traditional means.

Using AI, the team already found two planets: K2-293b andK2-294b. The two planets both orbit a star in the constellation Aquarius with the K2-293b around 1,300 light-years away and K2-294b around 1,230 light-years away.

Austin Andrew Vanderburg, a NASA Sagan Fellow at The University of Texas, said that using the AI will help in searching the data set uniformly. He said that despite the stars having an Earth-sized planet around it, they wouldn't be able to find all of them.

There is too much noise in the data and sometimes the planets are not correctly aligned. He added that there are many planets out there that they won't find for this very reason, so they have to correct it if they missed some. The key to discovering how many planets there are in total is to find out how many they have missed.

Anne Dattilo, an undergraduate at the University of Texas Austin, led the team to create an algorithm that analyzes data from Kepler to find signals missed previously by traditional planet-hunting methods. In the long run, the technique should help astronomers discover more planets possibly hidden in the Kepler data set.

Datillo also explained that they needed to create a new algorithm because Kepler’s extended mission K2's data set was challenging to work with. The spacecraft moved all the time due to mechanical failure and the AI had to consider the wobble from it.

Datillo said the two planets they found “are both very typical of planets found in K2." They both have short orbital periods. They are also hot and are in very close proximity to their host star.

The method can also be used to TESS which is Kepler's successor. Recently, TESS's efforts to search for planets have paid off. Astronomers found a Saturn-sized planet.

According to Daily Galaxy, the team's discoveries are to be published in the upcoming the Astronomical Journal.