NASA and Google To Announce AI Breakthrough With Kepler Space Telescope
NASA has called in a teleconference to reveal the new discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. The breakthrough was made thanks in part to Google's machine-learning artificial intelligence software.
The conference will be held on Thursday, Dec. 14 at 1 p.m. ET and will be streamed live on NASA's website. During the conference, key researchers will discuss what has been learned using Google's machine learning approach to artificial intelligence to analyze data from Kepler.
Among the participants are NASA Astrophysics Division director Paul Hertz, astronomer, and NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow Andrew Vanderburg, Kepler project scientist Jessie Dotson. They will be joined by Christopher Shallue, senior software engineer at Google Brain, the tech giant's machine intelligence research team.
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Google Brain is in charge of research that teaches machines to be fair and has been used to analyze data from the Kepler space telescope. Exactly what method it uses to analyze these data has yet to be revealed.
One possible way is through image enhancement. Earlier this year, Google Brain announced an image enhancement system using neural networks to fill in details in very low-resolution pictures. Given that Kepler's main goal is to look for extrasolar planets as well as any signs of alien life, most of its data likely consists of low-resolution images of objects light-years away.
Kepler was launched back in 2009 has delivered a plethora of new information and discoveries. Its discoveries have had a profound effect on the scientific community as astronomers went from being unsure of the number of planets beyond our solar system to believe there may be at least one planet for every star.
After finishing its main mission five years ago, the space telescope continued to provide valuable data. In 2014, it began the extended K2 objective in search for planets outside our solar system. This gave new opportunities for scientists to research not only extrasolar planets but also young stars as well as supernovae.
