Kepler Planet 10b orbiting Kepler 10 Star- Ames-NASA
One of the issues with analyzing Kepler light curves (LC) is seeing planet transit light drops in noisy or quiet LCs such as the one below. Kepler uses special algorithms and the powerful NASA computers to screen these light curves but there are limits to their usefulness.
Planet Hunters Light Curve APH10079064
Kepler 10b is a celebrated planet discovery using algorithms to detect the drop in the light curve indicating a transiting planet. As a side note, there is much more follow-on analysis to verify a planet transit but you can see below a well defined drop in the light curve.
Light Curve for Kepler 10b - Ames-NASA
The process of sonification is changing the medium of a LC from a visual representation of the star to that of an audio representation. Here is the light curve for Kepler 10b, shown above, as an audio file that you can listen to. This is the raw data file, unprocessed and put together by Jon Jenkins, Kepler Co-Investigator.
At Planet Hunters, citizen scientists are asked to use their pattern recognition skills to identify transiting planets and other unique star configurations. It is all about the human mind being able to penetrate deeper into the light curves looking for clues that the computer cannot recognize. Here is a short article at Planet Hunters I wrote about a novel way of finding eclipsing binary stars with few visual clues. What is quite interesting is that in the two examples shown the pattern recognition cues are are very subtle. However, the analysis of the LCs clearly shows eclipsing binary star characteristics. Knowing that similar light curves may indicate eclipsing binary stars these specific light curves can be closely analyzed to see if a search algorithm can be built around them.
This brings me back to Kepler 10b and the sonification of its light curve. On my web site, I discuss how it is possible to use the mind’s unique ability to perform pattern recognition with electromagnetic fields. I know this because of a particular pattern recognition ability I have with these weak fields. It is a similar process to that of developing the skill of human echolocation but in this case it is the skill of interpreting weak electromagnetic fields and their physiological affect on the body and most likely other biological life.
My view is that the frequency for a transiting planet, as a subset of its LC sonification, can be extracted from the raw audio file. I am talking about the electromagnetic field created by the electrical audio coil and not the mechanical sound waves generated by the speaker. Knowing the compound electromagnetic frequency indicating a transiting planet, researchers can reverse engineer this frequency back into the visual light curve spectrum and a viable algorithm can be designed. A breakthrough in analyzing noisy or quiet LCs for transiting planets may be possible.
Here is the transit frequency for Kepler 10b extracted from the raw data file. My hope is that researchers will perform the reverse engineering on this compound electromagnetic field that can be used in algorithms for detecting similar planet transits. There may be a unique electromagnetic frequency signature that applies to all planetary transits that can be extracted from the sonification of Kepler light curves.
