Science teammate for NASA says Kepler mission is “taking baby steps” | WGN Radio

Photo: jraineswgnam

"Jason Steffen, associate professor in physics and astronomy in Las Vegas, joins Matt Bubala to talk about the latest Kepler announcement." reports jraineswgnam, author at WGN Radio.

Photo: Jason Steffen

“There were a couple of planetary systems that have been studied in the past, but there was someone teamed up with a collaborator at Google and they used machine learning to analyze data again. In doing so, they discovered a new planet in each of those system and they discovered an eighth one,” Steffen says.

So where does the Kepler excitement come from? Steffen says “this is the first time where there is a search of algorithms where this machine learning that has been applied to Kepler data to make a discovery.” Also, the systems that these were discovered around were discovered from a relatively small planet. He says it was only twelve percent larger than the size of Earth...

...has been repurposed to the K2 mission, which allows the equipment to point at different parts of the sky. Since it’s hard to point at measurements, the space craft look at parts of the sky using light to to help steer it. He says it’s important to look at stars of all ages. 
For more information on NASA’s or to access Steffen’s work, visit his website.
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Source: WGN Radio