
A teenager discovered a new planet on the third day of his NASA internship - pseudolus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/10/teenager-discovered-new-planet-third-day-his-nasa-internship/
======
rvz
This is a better source of this news without the clickbait:

[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-s-tess-
missio...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-s-tess-mission-
uncovers-its-1st-world-with-two-stars)

Strangely, this is like the 9th time I've seen this post on HN again and I'm
shocked as to why it hasn't been of interest to anyone.

~~~
brudgers
I'm still amazed at exoplanets. I remember my ten year-old's surprise at being
instructed that there are only nine planets as a matter of scientific fact. I
remember my twenty-one-year-old's joy reading Giordano Bruno's _Cause,
Princple, Unity: essays on magic_ one afternoon deep within a dusty university
library's stacks. I remember my excitement when the first exoplanet
observations were announced a few years later.

The NASA link doesn't focus on the "prodigy" aspect. Without that, it's "just
another exoplanet observation." My cynicism about that bothers me. I think
it's because exoplanet observations have become ordinary to astronomy in
recent years. So ordinary that even an intern can find one their first week on
the job. So ordinary that the PR department needs to be involved to get
mainstream media coverage and focuses who did it rather than what was done.

To put it another way, finding exoplanets has become so easy that "even a
child can do it." And claiming there are many many planets no longer gets a
person burned at the stake.

