If you're anything like me, you will think that deep in
space - in a galaxy far, far away - aliens exist. While I don't think aliens are big green men with large heads and black eyes, I do believe that there is some form of life form somewhere in the great big place above our heads. So, when
NASA decides to hold a major press conference after their new
telescope has made a new breakthrough, I naturally get very excited.
The Kepler space telescope is used by NASA to discover other earths, some of which they believe could potentially support life. It looks like it has now found its latest discovery and it's obviously significant enough that NASA has felt the need to call a huge press conference to reveal it.
Very little information has been given about the announcement, which is scheduled to go ahead on Thursdsay. It's being widely reported that it will center around exoplanets, which are Earth-sized worlds that orbit around their own stars, and are apparently our best hope of finding an alien life form.
The space agency has said that the latest discovery was achieved with the help of Google artificial intelligence, which is being used to analyse the data sent down by the telescope. By using the technology and machines that have been provided by the tech giant, NASA is hoping that it can pick through the possible planets more quickly and find life-supporting planets promptly.
NASA says that there will be four engineers and scientists who will take part in Thursday's session. The team will include Paul Hertz, who leads the space agency's astrophysics division, a senior Google software engineer and two scientists.
The Kepler telescope was first launched in 2009, when scientists didn't know how man exoplanets were out there. It has shown that the planets are surprisingly common, indicating that each star may have its own planet.
The telescope completed its main mission in 2012, but it has continued to do more work. In 2014, it was given a new mission called K2, which looks for further exoplanets as well as studying other forms of cosmic phenomena.
Due to the sheer amount of data that comes from the telescope, scientists have trouble picking through it in order to find planets that might be of interest. The introduction of the artificial intelligence, which has been provided by Google, is intended to help with this problem by allowing computers to do a large part of the work.
The Kepler mission has led to several major breakthroughs already, with it finding plenty of planets that could potentially support life. The majority of these breakthroughs have been announced in major press conferences like the one that is set to go ahead on Thursday.
So we could be finding out about a new planet. Hopefully, it's something a bit more insane - imagine the day when they discover another life form - what a story that will be.
