Scientists Discover Miniature Version Of Our Solar System, With Eight Planets And A Star That Resemb
The Kepler-90 solar system has eight known planets, just like ours. In both cases, small ones orbit closer to the star and large ones are farther away. (Caption Credit: Los Angeles Times / Image Credit:NASA/Ames Research Center/Wendy Stenzel)
Scientists utilizing NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and applying artificial intelligence data capture methods have discovered an eighth planet around the star Kepler-90. This breaks the record for a known star with the most exoplanets.
The planet that was discovered is called "Kepler-90i" and, according to a paper accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal, demonstrates for the first time that other stars can host planetary systems similar to our own solar system.
Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling a Sun-like star called Kepler-90. (Caption Credit: Los Angeles Times / Video Credit: NASA's Ames Research Center YouTube Channel)
Scientists say the findings establish the growing role that neural networks and other AI learning techniques could contribute in the hunt for even the most elusive planets outside of our local system.
Commenting on the occasion, Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington, said, "Today Kepler confirms that stars can have large families of planets just like our solar system."
There's plenty of space left for the Kepler Space Telescope to explore, and more exoplanets around Kepler-90 could well be found. (Caption Credit: Los Angeles Times / Image Credit: Wendy Stenzel / NASA Ames Research Center)
According to a Los Angeles Times article:
"Kepler-90i sits around a sun-like star 2,545 light years away in the constellation Draco. Like the Earth, Kepler-90i is also the third rock from its sun — though it sits much closer, circling its star every 14.4 days. The two small planets within its orbit (planets 90b and 90c) revolve around Kepler-90 every seven and nine days, respectively.
"The next three planets beyond Kepler-90i’s orbit (90d, 90e and 90f) fall into a sub-Neptune size class and orbit every 60, 92 and 125 days, respectively. The last two planets, 90g and 90h, are Jupiter-class gas giants, and take 211 and 332 days, respectively, to make a round trip.
"All of the planets except for 90i were previously known. That put the Kepler-90 system in a tie with the seven-planet Trappist-1 system for the honor of most populous exoplanet solar system."
Although we now know of two solar systems with eight planets, the majority of known exoplanets orbit their host stars on their own. (Caption Credit: Los Angeles Times / Image Credits: Wendy Stenzel / NASA Ames Research Center and Andrew Vanderburg / University of Texas at Austin)
Many of the planets in the Kepler-90 system appear to mimic our own, with small rocky planets (such as Earth, Mars, Mercury and Venus) located closer to the sun and larger, gas-rich ones (like Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn and Uranus) lying farther away.
One scientist thinks there's a good reason why larger planets orbit far away from their star: It's not as hot.
"In our own solar system, this pattern is often seen as evidence that the outer planets formed in a cooler part of the solar system, where ice can stay solid and clumped together to make bigger and bigger planets," said Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin.
All eight known planets in the Kepler-90 solar system are scrunched into a space equivalent to that between the Earth to the sun. The three inner planets have extremely tight orbits, with years that last from seven to 14.4 Earth days. (Caption Credit: Los Angeles Times / Image Credit: Wendy Stenzel / NASA Ames Research Center)
