A 17-year-old high school student who was interning at NASA discovered a new planet on his third day.
Wolf Cukier discovered the planet, now named TOI 1338 b, which is about 1,300 light years away from the Earth.
Cukier said in a statement:
“I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had flagged as an eclipsing binary, a system where two stars circle 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.”
According to NASA, TOI 1338 b orbits two stars and is 6.9 times the size of Earth but it is very unlikely that it can support life.
But seriously, what did you DO on your third day of your last internship?
I rest my case.