Ever heard of a mechanic becoming a scientific author and discovering something interesting, which can be contributed to the history of science? This has happened in Australia, where a mechanic is all set to become a published scientific author. He has contributed to the discovery of a four-planet solar system.
According to The Guardian, there was a Stargazers Live astronomy event organized over three nights on ABC this week. The event was for the budding astronomers who had to hunt for any new planets or exoplanets from the data observations of nearly 100,000 stars or even more, by the NASA's Kepler space telescope. The data was downloaded onto the Zooniverse website.
Andrew Grey, who is just 26 years old from Darwin, participated in the event. "The first night I jumped on, until about half past 12, and cataloged about a thousand on the first night. So I punched a few out," Grey said. There were four new planets in his observations, which were still not discovered and unknown to science.
Science Alert reports that these planets are situated nearly 600 light-years away from the earth. These four planets are sized a little more than twice the size of the earth. They orbit a star, which has a mass around 90% of earth's sun mass. Professor Chris Lintott from Oxford University cleared that in a way, the four planets solar system is very similar to the solar system consisting of earth, in a compact form.
This discovery from the Australian mechanic about the four planets solar system will help the scientists to study more about it and it will also assist the scientists in finding the formation of new planets. There were other 90 confirmed new planets in the crowdsourcing activity where more than 7000 volunteers took part. The event is still going on with new volunteers taking part and helping the scientists for any new discovery in the universe.