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17-Year-Old NASA Intern Found A New Planet on His Third Day
For some, it is a dread doing an internship; others would find it exciting while some others could find a brand-new planet in NASA! Just last year, Wolf Cukier, who is 17 years old, did find something extraordinary during his summer vacation in his senior year.
He helped in discovering a new planet, TOI 1338 b, the modern world that is 1,300 light-years away. This new world has two stars orbiting at the same time, which is unlikely but very incredible.
Just last year in July, Cukier was finishing his junior year at the Scarsdale High school in Scarsdale, New York. He began his internship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He had the task of scrutinizing the data that had been beamed back from the space by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite or the TESS.
What is significant about this TESS is that it allows people to volunteer to watch the online transmission for patterns in the brightness of the star, which could eventually suggest a discovery of a start. It could be crowdsourcing of the universe, or so they say.
In his first week of internship, he was going through data that were recorded by citizen-scientists. He zeroed in on two orbiting stars. He noticed something odd. He was able to identify a body on that system and was verified as a planet that was 6.9 bogger than Earth. Probably the size of the Saturn planet. It completes an orbit every 93-95 days.
That being said, the irregularity of the transit period is because of the two orbiting stars which the planet has to orbit. His workmates gave that system a name, TOI 1338, TOI stood for the acronym for TESS Object of Interest. Later on, it was called TOI 1338 b.
During an interview, this high school intern said, “I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had flagged as an eclipsing binary, a system where two stars circles around each other and from our view eclipse each other every orbit. “About three days into my internship, I saw a signal from a system called TOI 1338. At first, I thought it was a stellar eclipse, but the timing was wrong. It turned out to be a planet.”
“It was awesome. I never expected to find anything. The fact that I found something is cool, and seeing the scientific process and how many people have to work to verify the planet, and techniques for things like that, it is awesome”, he added.
According to Veselin Kostov, a research scientist at SETI and NASA Goddard, “These are the types of signals that algorithms struggle with. The human eye is extremely good at finding patterns in data, especially non-periodic patterns like those we see in transits from these systems.”
The planets with two suns are not natural for TESS to detect, but the contribution of this young man in examining the star data and the planet pass and the two stars were keys to discovering this brand-new planet.
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NEW K.ID, the No.1 TV channel for all K-Pop entertainment and source (https://cutt.ly/NEWKID), announced its weekly chart for the 3rd week of August.
BLACKPINK retains its #1 spot in the NEW K.ID’s weekly chart for three consecutive weeks as they tie with WINNER’s previous record. BLACKPINK has announced a new single dropping on August 28th which will be a collaboration with American pop star, Selena Gomez. Selena Gomez also recently teased her collaboration with BLACKPINK on her Instagram post captioned, “SELPINK pulling up soon. 8/28”.
Following their release of the single, BLACKPINK will be releasing their first debut album on October 2nd.
PENTAGON, SHINee, GWSN, and N.Flying all retained their spots in TOP5. The 6th place, WINNER, celebrated their 6th year debut anniversary. MINO posted a photo of WINNER on his Instagram, celebrating the time and unforgettable memories that they have spent together for the last 6 years.
Ranked at #9, SF9’s Rowoon has been named as ‘The North Face white label’s F/W’ model and its brand ambassador. With a height over 6’3’’, Rowoon not only has a youthful personality but also has various talents as he can both sing and act in various entertainment fields. The North Face saw that Rowoon’s versatility perfectly matched its brand image and decided to partner with Rowoon.
Coming in at #10, DAY6’s sub-unit, Even of Day, is releasing a new album, ‘The Book of Us: Gluon – Nothing can tear us apart’ on August 31st. All 7 songs in the album are written and produced by the Even of Day members. Young K is expected to play guitar in place of Sungjin and Jae. JYP’s representative commented, “Young K showed his expertise on the bass guitar and will continue to play more instruments.” It was also mentioned that Wonpil’s synthesizer and Dowoon’s electronic drum will be key in this album.
Additionally, in last week’s ‘2020 SORIBADA BEST K-MUSIC AWARDS’, GWSN and LOONA won New Wave New Artist Awards while GFRIEND took the main prize (bonsang) home.
NEW K.ID, the only TV channel that allows viewers to enjoy K-POP Idol-related content programming 24/7 and exclusive episodes curated from 10K+ videos, is available at CH 511 for free on LG Smart TVs and XUMO apps on all Internet-connected devices.
Breaking News
Death after unmasked arrest – Mexico Floyd
The official reason for the arrest revealed by the police is not known, but the video footage posted on social media at the time of the arrest suggests that the reason is “not wearing a mask.”
Amid a stir across the U.S. over the “George Floyd” incident that killed white police abuses, similar cases of abuse of public power have been revealed in Mexico, sparking public outrage.
The daily El Universal has been protesting against the incident since it was belatedly revealed that construction worker Giovanni Lopez died the next day after being arrested by police in Guadalajara, western Mexico, on April 4.
The official reason for the arrest revealed by the police is not known, but the video footage posted on social media at the time of the arrest suggests that the reason is “not wearing a mask.”
Death of George Floyd
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed face down in the street