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He used AI on NASA data and found a planet candidate nobody had reported

Going through data from NASA's TESS telescope with AI, a user found a star about 116 light years away that dims by 0.05 percent every 3.18 days for about two hours, the same dip in 2018, 2020 and 2025 data. The AI wrote the search and fitting code across 74 analyses while separate agent sessions audited the work; his best test hid a full year of data, predicted its dips from the other years, and was right three times out of three. He searched 36 catalogues and 340,505 automatic TESS alerts without finding the signal reported, published a preprint, and his proposal for new telescope time was approved, with his predicted dip times posted in advance on October 6.

This only partly worked. Read what happened before you try it.

How it works

  1. Download and parse telescope data with AI
  2. Write transit search and fitting code
  3. Hold out one year and predict its dips, three times
  4. Audit rounds catch an overstated statistic, which he removes
  5. Search 36 catalogues and 340,505 alerts for prior reports
  6. Preprint and advance predictions published
  7. Observing proposal approved

Why it’s worth knowing

He preregistered the exact times the dips should appear in data that does not exist yet, so the claim can fail in public.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on reddit.com. See the original ↗

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