Friday, 1 November 2013

Planet Hunters

Planet Hunters

NASA's Kepler spacecraft is one of the most powerful tools in the hunt for extrasolar planets. The Kepler team's computers are sifting through the data, but there will be planets which can only be found via the remarkable human ability for pattern recognition.
This is a gamble, a bet if you will, on the ability of humans to beat machines just occasionally.  Fancy giving it a try?
 The Planet Hunters initiative, where volunteers trawl through light curves from Kepler, has just reported finding numerous exoplanets, including a seventh planet orbiting a star about 2,500 light years from Earth, “marking the first seven- planet candidate system from Kepler”, according to details posted on arxiv.org.

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