In what might be the biggest Google search of the decade, CNET reports that NASA has used Google's machine learning technology to discover a new exoplanet. Orbiting Kepler-90, a sun-like star 2,545 light years away from Earth, Kepler-90i is an extremely hot, rocky, and barren planet that orbits its star in 14.4 days. Aside from its extreme temperatures, the planet is notable for the fact that it is the eighth planet discovered in the Kepler-90 system, making the system itself tied with ours in the number of planets which orbit a star. Kepler-90i is also notable for the way in which it was discovered. NASA made use of Google's machine learning to analyze data collected by the Kepler Space Telescope.

NASA has discovered an eighth planet around a distant star, which means we're no longer the largest solar system we know of. The discovery was made thanks to some artificial intelligence help from Google, which found the planet by scouring previously overlooked "weak" signals in data captured by the Kepler Space Telescope. The newly found planet is located in the solar system around Kepler-90, a star about 2,500 light-years away from Earth that was previously discovered in 2014. The Kepler Space Telescope has been searching the galactic sky for exoplanets, or planets outside our own Solar System, since it launched in 2009. In order to sift through all the data that it's captured since that launch, scientists usually look at the strongest signals first.

Last December, NASA announced that two new exoplanets had been hiding in plain sight among data from the Kepler space telescope. These two new planets weren't discovered by a human, however. Instead, an exoplanet hunting neural network--a type of machine learning algorithm loosely modeled after the human brain--had discovered the planets by finding subtle patterns in the Kepler data that would've been nearly impossible for a human to see. On Thursday, Christopher Shallue, the lead Google engineer behind the exoplanet AI, announced in a blog post that the company was making the algorithm open source. In other words, anyone can download the code and help hunt for exoplanets in Kepler data.

Google will open source the machine learning technology that allowed it to discover new exoplanets, the tech giant announced in a Thursday blog post. In December, Google announced that it had found two exoplanets by training a neural network to analyze data from NASA's Kepler space telescope and identify signals that could be coming from planets, our sister site ZDNet reported at the time. This success suggests that machine learning could be used both for discovering exoplanets, as well as a number of other scientific disciplines, including healthcare and quantum chemistry, Chris Shallue, a senior software engineer on the Google Brain Team, wrote in the blog post. SEE: IT pro's guide to working smarter with Linux (Tech Pro Research) This code may be useful for those developing similar models for other NASA missions, including Kepler's second mission K2, and the upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, the post noted. In the post, Google also explained the basics of how the model works. When searching for planets in Kepler data, scientists use automated software to first detect signals that could potentially be caused by planets.

The newly-discovered Kepler-90i – a hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days – was found using machine learning from Google Forget self-driving cars and computers that can beat humans at chess, artificial intelligence is helping astronomers make huge steps towards solving some of the Universe's biggest mysteries. For the first time, artificial intelligence has been used to discover two new exoplanets. One of the discoveries, made by Nasa's Kepler mission, brings the Kepler-90 solar system to a total of 8 planets - the first solar system found with the same number as our own. The majority of exoplanets are discovered using what is called the transit method. Telescopes are pointed at stars, studying them over long periods of time, which means they can look out for tiny dips in the brightness as a planet passes in front.

Google is famous for its "20 percent time," whereby staffers are allowed to spend the equivalent of one workday a week on passion projects that they believe will benefit the company. The idea is that creativity and innovation happen when people are allowed to experiment. Things like Gmail and Chromebooks have resulted, according to a Google spokesperson. Whether the policy still exists has been debated over the last few years. But on Thursday, Google announced that artificial intelligence researcher and senior software engineer Chris Shallue discovered two new planets -- and it was born of a flex time side venture.

NASA has called a press conference to reveal a breakthrough discovery from its alien-hunting Kepler telescope. The discovery was driven by Google's machine-learning artificial intelligence software. The announcement will be live-streamed on NASA's website, according to a press release. It will take place Thursday, December 14, at 1 p.m. EST. NASA's Kepler space telescope has been searching for habitable planets since 2009.

For the first time, another solar system has been found in our galaxy with eight planets, just like our own – and it was Google's artificial intelligence that found it. Using machine learning and neural networks to achieve something humans could not, weak signal data from NASA's Kepler space telescope was scrutinized using Google machine learning technology to make the discovery. The discovery of an eighth planet circling the distant star Kepler-90 system – which lies 2,545 light years away in the constellation of Draco in the northern sky – marks the first time that another solar system has been found with the same number of planets as our own. Kepler-90i is a hot, rocky planet orbiting its star once every 14.4 days, and it was found by University of Texas at Austin astronomer Andrew Vanderburg and Christopher Shallue, a senior software engineer at Google AI in Mountain View, California. They did it by using a computer that'learned' to find planets in data from NASA's Kepler space telescope.

Alphabet's Google and NASA said on Thursday that advanced computer analysis identified two new planets around distant stars, including one that is part of the first star system with as many planets as Earth's solar system. The research by Google and the University of Texas at Austin that used data from NASA raised the prospects of new insights into the universe by feeding data into computer programs that can churn through information faster and more in-depth than humanly possibly, a technique known as machine learning. In this case, software learned differences between planets and other objects by analysing thousands of data points, achieving 96 percent accuracy, NASA said at a news conference. The data came from the Kepler telescope which NASA launched into space in 2009 as part of a planet-finding mission that is expected to end next year as the spacecraft runs out of fuel. The software's artificial "neural network" combed through data about 670 stars, which led to the discovery of planets Kepler 80g and Kepler 90i.

The Kepler space telescope, which launched in 2009, has produced more than 30,000 signals measuring light from stars to search for possible planets in distant parts of the galaxy. Sifting through that and other telescope data, astronomers have found more than 3,500 planets, up from 329 known before the Kepler mission. Now artificial intelligence is helping to find even more. On Thursday, researchers from Google and University of Texas at Austin announced that a machine-learning algorithm had discovered two new planets, Kepler 80g and Kepler 90i. Kepler 90i is a particularly special discovery--it's the eighth planet orbiting its star, marking the first system outside our own known to have eight planets.