Astronomy / Space NASA Kepler announcement Tuesday May 10

Slightly surprised that nobody has mentioned this yet, but tomorrow at 13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, or 17:00 UTC) NASA will be holding a press conference about the latest Kepler/K2 discoveries.

Linky: www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-latest-kepler-discoveries-during-media-teleconference

This could be the announcement of one or more nearby Earth-likes, but NASA have announced such discoveries before without need of a dedicated press conference. Perhaps it is supernova related, as that is something that Kepler's K2 mission is also looking at, but again why the need for a press conference?

There are the usual conspiracy nuts who are convinced that this will be an announcement confirming aliens, but that's not terribly likely (would be great, though!).

I think there's a possibility that they have found our fabled Planet X, for which evidence has been recently mounting. I believe that discovery would be within scope of Kepler's, uh, scope, even if it's not what the thing was designed to do.

Any other theories?
 
Hmm. 1284 new exoplanets confirmed. That's pretty impressive!

I bet they don't get added in 2.1 though :p
 
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