NASA's Latest Kepler Exoplanet Discovery Fueled by AI

Saturn's rings sure are pretty, and Matt Damon's been to Mars, but our eight-planet solar system may not be that special after all. Today, scientists using data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft announced they'd discovered an eighth planet orbiting a star 2,500 light years away. They've named the planet Kepler-90i after the star it orbits, Kepler-90, which is slightly hotter and more massive than our sun. "This discovery of an eighth planet ties Kepler-90 with our own solar system for having the most known planets," said NASA astrophysicist Paul Hertz during a press conference about the discovery. Researchers found the exoplanet by re-sifting through four years of data from a Kepler instrument called a photometer, a machine that measures the brightness of stars.