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NASA will be hosting a somewhat unusual press conference on Thursday (NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 14) to announce the latest find from its planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler has found many hundreds of planets beyond our solar system over the years, but this week's announcement will be different because Google will be sharing in the science spotlight.
"The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google," reads a release from the space agency, adding that the breakthrough "demonstrates new ways of analyzing Kepler data."
Exactly what has been discovered won't be revealed until Thursday, but with Kepler there's always a good chance that some new distant planets will be part of the reveal. Expect to hear something about a new era of planet-hunting assisted by artificial intelligence: That would be my guess for Thursday. We'll just have to wait and see if Google's A.I. is also helping to detect signs of alien life on the numerous worlds beyond our solar system as well.
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-nasa-kepler-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-planets/
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday December 13 2017, @01:05PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_(spacecraft)#Confirming_planet_candidates [wikipedia.org]
If all they are presenting is Kepler data (nothing from other telescopes like Spitzer), they are likely to add to the list of exoplanet candidates, but they (Kepler team) can also confirm the exoplanets using astrometry.
We can expect the results to be about Earth-sized exoplanets in habitable zones.
Kepler is good at determining the radius and orbital period of an exoplanet, but not necessarily the mass. But it CAN be done. For example:
Measuring the Mass of a Mars-size Exoplanet [nasa.gov]
The mass of the Mars-sized exoplanet Kepler-138 b from transit timing [nature.com]
By finding tiny changes in transit timing caused by systems with multiple exoplanets, mass, and thus density, can be constrained.
Kepler data + machine learning can get you almost everything you need to describe the exoplanet, but not atmospheric composition AFAIK.
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