Web users help find new planets

U.S. astronomers say 40,000 "citizen scientists" using the Internet to help analyze data from a space telescope have discovered two potential exoplanets. In the Planet Hunters project launched last December, Web users around the world have been helping professional astronomers analyze the data collected by NASA's Kepler mission from 150,000 stars in the hope of discovering Earth-like planets orbiting around them, a Yale University release said Thursday. The discovery of the two new candidate exoplanets will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "This is the first time that the public has used data from a NASA space mission to detect possible planets orbiting other stars," Yale astronomer Debra Fischer, who helped launch the Planet Hunters project, said. "I think there's a 95 percent chance or greater that these are bona fide planets." The Kepler team has already announced the discovery of 1,200 exoplanet candidates and will follow up on the highest potential ones with further analysis, it said. "Obviously Planet Hunters doesn't replace the analysis being done by the Kepler team," Meg Schwamb, a Yale researcher and Planet Hunters co-founder, said. "But it has proven itself to be a valuable tool in the search for other worlds."