🪐 When AI found a planet humans missed Sample
A neural network spotted an eighth planet around the star Kepler-90.
The mystery
NASA's Kepler telescope collected years of starlight data. Astronomers had already checked it — so how was a planet still hiding in it?
The answer
In 2017, researchers trained a neural network to recognise the tiny dip in brightness when a planet passes in front of its star. Searching weak signals people had skipped, it found Kepler-90i, making Kepler-90 the first known star besides the Sun with eight planets.
Now think about this
How many more worlds are already sitting in our data, waiting for the right AI to notice them?
