NASA is all set to make a very 'major' announcement in its impressive hunt for alien life on this Thursday. At the moment very few details have been revealed about this new briefing this week. This briefing is all set to take place via teleconference on at 1:00pm ET (6:00pm GMT).
However, NASA says the
news will focus on work done by its Kepler planet hunting telescope which has
been working with Google's AI system to find potentially-habitable worlds. The Kepler mission has spotted thousands of
exoplanets since 2014, with 21 Earth-sized planets now known to orbit within
the habitable zones of their stars.
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| As of May 2014, Kepler started its K2 mission, which has provided an ecliptic field of view with greater opportunities for Earth-based observatories in both the northern and southern hemispheres |
The briefing is likely to
reveals the telescope's latest catalogue, which is set to be Nasa's best look
yet at possible alien planets. The teleconference on December 14, and will be
live-streamed on Nasa's website.
'The discovery was made by
researchers using machine learning from Google,' Nasa said. 'Machine learning
is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of
analysing Kepler data.'
Scientists from the
Astrophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate and Ames Research
Centre will be present at the announcement.
Google’s senior AI
software engineer and an expert from the University of Texas at Austin, will
finally reveal the latest planet candidate results at this week's event. The
Kepler space telescope launched in 2009 and has since helped in the search for
planets outside of the solar system that orbit within the habitable zone of
their star.
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| The Kepler mission has spotted thousands of confirmed exoplanets over the years, with 21 planets not much larger than Earth now known to orbit within their stars' habitable zones |
Last summer, astronomers
revealed they'd discovered 197 new planet candidates, and confirmed 104 planets
through the Kepler mission. The planets, which are all between 20 and 50 per
cent larger than Earth by diameter, orbit the M dwarf star K2-72, found 181
light years away. At the time, the researchers, led by the University of
Arizona, said the possibility of life on planets around a star of this kind
cannot be ruled out.
Since its launch, the
Kepler mission has been plagued by several setbacks, but has continued to spot
new objects outside of the solar system. In its initial mission, Kepler
surveyed just one patch of sky in the northern hemisphere, measuring the
frequency of planets whose size and temperature might be similar to Earth orbiting
stars similar to our sun. In the spacecraft's extended mission in 2013, it lost
its ability to precisely stare at its original target area, but a fix created a
second life for the telescope.
After the fix, Kepler
started its K2 mission in 2014, which has provided an ecliptic field of view
with greater opportunities for Earth-based observatories in both the northern
and southern hemispheres. Because it covers more of the sky, the K2 mission is
capable of observing a larger fraction of cooler, smaller, red-dwarf type
stars.
Via Dailymail