Scientists have discovered hundreds of exoplanets through the Kepler telescope. The results come from NASA and JPL-Caltech. In November 2021, the number of exoplanets ushered in a leap. Astronomers announced that 301 new exoplanets were discovered and 366 are yet to be confirmed. The Kepler telescope was launched in 2009 and ended its mission at the end of 2018 after running out of fuel. However, scientists are still mining the data recorded by the Kepler telescope and continue to explore the distant universe.
NASA scientists published the first of two peer-reviewed papers in the Astrophysical Journal on January 17, 2021, and scientists from UCLA published the second in the same journal on November 23, 2021. Both articles can be browsed on arXiv.
Overall, The Kepler mission was extremely successful, and as of December 6, 2021, astronomers had confirmed 4,888 exoplanets. It is no exaggeration to say that Kepler single-handedly discovered most of the known exoplanets.
Planets in the orbits of the exoplanet system range in size from the size of the Earth to larger than Jupiter . Some planets orbit even closer than the orbit of Mercury to the sun. There are also some planets in sub-Neptunian orbits that are between the size of the Earth and
. Between Neptune , such a planet does not exist in our solar system.
A NASA research team used a program called ExoMiner to discover 301 confirmed planets. At the same time, astronomers at UCLA University used new algorithms to discover 366 planets to be confirmed.
Kepler uses the transit method to detect exoplanets. When a planet passes in front of a star, the star appears less bright to us, allowing scientists to see more of it through measurements.
ExoMiner is a deep neural network running on a NASA supercomputer. Scientists use the network to determine whether fluctuations in brightness are actually planets passing in front of stars or whether they are caused by measurement errors. Jenkins, a scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, said that ExoMiner does not fight alone. On the contrary, it requires a lot of data processing work behind it, which is extremely time-consuming.
Unlike other exoplanet detection methods, the ExoMiner detection method is not a black box method. It is not mysterious to determine whether the detected exoplanet is an exoplanet. We can easily judge the detection results through data interpretation. ExoMiner analyzes data from the Kepler data archive to discover new exoplanets that were previously known but not confirmed by scientists from the Kepler Science Operations Center's systems. Analysis by ExoMiner confirmed that these planets are exoplanets.
ExoMiner project leader Hamid said that when ExoMiner determines that an object is a planet, it can be said with certainty that it is a planet. ExoMiner is very accurate and in some aspects is more reliable than existing machines and human experts. Spectrum, although human experts still have biases against it. Jenkins added: These 301 newly discovered exoplanets can help us better understand the planets outside the solar system and their star systems , which makes our solar system so unique in the universe.
The next day, astronomers from UCLA announced that they had analyzed 366 unidentified exoplanets from Kepler data. UCLA co-author Eric Patigula said that unlike the NASA team, they used a new algorithm developed internally. The discovery of hundreds of exoplanets is a great achievement, but beyond that, we also need to know how these discoveries can guide us to understand the overall characteristics of the exoplanet population.
Partikula and lead author Jenkins are members of a team of astronomers called the Climb K2 Project. Patiguda said the project is using data from the K2 phase of the Kepler mission, which was used to compensate for mechanical failures in the original mission, which ended in 2013. The planet detection algorithm invented by the
K2 project team and Jenkins is a huge breakthrough for understanding planetary groups. There is no doubt that they will improve our understanding of the processes by which planets form and evolve.Eventually, all K2 project data was decoded, including 500TB of data and 800 million images. The data were analyzed using UCLA's Hoffman 2 computer cluster.
In addition to discovering new exoplanets, the research team also identified 381 exoplanets we already know. In the data of the K2 project, the research team discovered 747 independent planets to be confirmed and 57 multi-star systems.
Scientists want to understand which stars are more likely to host more planets and how many star systems have the necessary material to form planets. As Jenkins said, we need to go to a wider range of stars than just our sun. Studying each exostar system provides a unique perspective on planet formation.
Since we trained ExoMiner to use data from the Kepler mission for analysis, after fine-tuning, we can also let ExoMiner process data from other projects, including the ongoing TESS project, on which we are still very far behind room for improvement.
These new discoveries are exciting, and there are more new worlds waiting for us to explore. In fact, scientists estimate that our Milky Way alone contains billions of planets. Most of the planets orbit their corresponding stars. At the same time, there are millions or more planets that do not have fixed orbits. They are the stars in the universe. A wandering planet, wandering alone in the universe. You know, there are billions of galaxies like the Bank System in the universe. This makes people wonder how many unknown worlds there are in the universe!
BY: Paul Scott Anderson
FY: Pudding
If there is any infringement of relevant content, please contact the author after the work is published to delete
Please also obtain authorization for reprinting, and pay attention to maintaining integrity and indicating the source
