A team of scientists from the University of Georgia has developed a novel method for discovering and classifying new planets that are far from Earth.
New planet found by AI
They discovered an exoplanet by using machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence (AI).
A recent study proved that artificial intelligence (AI) can correctly detect the presence of an exoplanet by looking in protoplanetary discs, the gas surrounding freshly created stars.
The recently published findings represent a first step towards using machine learning to identify previously overlooked exoplanets.
“We confirmed the planet using traditional techniques, but our models directed us to run those simulations and showed us exactly where the planet might be,” said lead author Jason Terry in a statement.
“When we applied our models to a set of older observations, they identified a disc that had previously been analysed but was not known to have a planet.”
We did simulations of the disc, like with earlier discoveries, and discovered that a planet could recreate the observation.”
According to Terry, the models indicated the existence of a planet, as indicated by many images that intensely highlighted a specific region of the disc that turned out to be the traditional indicator of a planet – an extreme change in the velocity of the gas surrounding the planet.
Cassandra Hall, assistant professor of computational astrophysics and main investigator of the University of Georgia’s Exoplanet and Planet Formation Research Group, stated:
“This is an incredibly exciting proof of concept. We knew from our previous work that we could use machine learning to find known forming exoplanets. Now, we know for sure that we can use it to make brand discoveries.
“This demonstrates that our models – and machine learning in general – have the ability to quickly and accurately identify important information that people can miss. This has the potential to dramatically speed up analysis and subsequent theoretical insights,” Terry said.
“It only took about an hour to analyze that entire catalogue and find strong evidence for a new planet in a specific spot, so we think there will be an important place for these types of techniques as our datasets get even larger.”
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