Scientists have announced a significant discovery beyond our solar system that could change the way we understand the formation of planets in the universe.
A new study led by Princeton University in New Jersey has identified more than 10 new planet candidates located trillions of kilometers from Earth. Among them are at least 11 worlds described by scientists as "super-Earths."
Using artificial intelligence to analyze old data from NASA's TESS satellite, researchers examined information collected from more than 83 million stars and discovered thousands of hidden worlds that had gone unnoticed for years.
This discovery suggests that planet formation may be much more common than previously thought, including around faint stars, which were once considered too difficult to study.
If even a fraction of these candidates are confirmed, the number of known worlds outside our solar system will increase significantly. This would strengthen the idea that planets may outnumber stars in the Milky Way.
Currently, NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute has confirmed the existence of 6,286 exoplanets in the galaxy. An exoplanet is any planet outside our solar system, from icy worlds to Jupiter-like gas giants.
So far, fewer than 900 of these planets have been confirmed using TESS data. In the new paper, the researchers say their findings more than double the number of known exoplanet candidates discovered by TESS.
The team looked for "transiting" planets, i.e. planets that pass in front of their star from Earth's perspective, causing a small, regular dip in the star's brightness.
Previous TESS research has focused mostly on brighter stars, which are easier to observe. The new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, aimed to analyze much dimmer stars, up to 10 times dimmer than can be seen with the naked eye.
The researchers started with raw data from TESS's first full year of observations, when the satellite photographed large swaths of the sky every 30 minutes during 2018 and 2019.
They then used so-called "light curves," graphs that show how the brightness of each star changes over time, to analyze 83 million stars.
To cope with this huge volume of data, the Princeton team trained two artificial intelligence models, known as “Random Forest” classifiers. These models were taught to distinguish real planetary transits from spurious signals, such as binary stars eclipsing each other or other noise in the spatial data.
Artificial intelligence identified the most promising candidates from 83 million light curves, which were then checked by researchers.
In the end, the list included 11,554 planet candidates. Of these, 10,091 are completely new, previously undiscovered worlds around these faint stars, and have been observed to transit their stars multiple times. Another 411 candidates have been observed to transit their respective stars only once.
Of all these worlds, only 11 have been identified as Earth-like. Scientists describe them as "super-Earths," which could be one to two times larger than our planet and have rocky surfaces.
However, the study does not confirm whether any of these planets have liquid water, one of the key factors in the search for extraterrestrial life.
It is also not known whether any of them are in the “habitable zone” of their star system, also known as the “Goldilocks zone.” This is the ideal distance from the star where the planet is neither too hot nor too cold, creating the possibility for liquid water to exist on the surface.
The results show that the vast majority of the new candidates appear to be gas giants, planets composed primarily of dense gases such as hydrogen and helium, with thick atmospheres and small rocky or metallic cores. In our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn are examples of such planets.
According to the research team, this discovery shows that large-scale searches, aided by artificial intelligence, can significantly expand the catalog of transiting planets, especially around faint stars that have so far been left in the shadows. /GazetaExpress/
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