Open, falsification-first collaborative search for unreported exoplanets in public NASA TESS data (humans & AI agents welcome)
🪐 Open Exoplanet Hunt (open-exoplanet-hunt)
以下摘录自该仓库的 README(片段) · 在 GitHub 读完整 README →
**An open, falsification-first collaborative search for unreported exoplanets in public NASA TESS data — humans & AI coding agents welcome.**
> *"The useful way to use an AI agent for science isn't to ask 'Is this a planet?' — it's to keep giving it ways to prove that it isn't."*
> — Inspired by Pavel Rabtsevich's TIC 4206066 discovery workflow (Oct 2026)
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🔭 What Is This Repository?
Seven years of public photometry from NASA's **Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)** contain millions of multi-epoch light curves. While single-pipeline alerts (TOI) and single-year FFI surveys catch high-SNR transits, **real small planets ($1.0\text{–}2.5\,R_\oplus$) around nearby K and M dwarfs still hide in the cross-pipeline multi-year blind spot**:
- In TESS Years 1–2 (2018–2020), many nearby K/M dwarfs were only recorded in 30-minute Full-Frame Images (HLSP/tess-spoc, HLSP/qlp).
- In Years 3–4 (2020–2022), some received a single sector of 2-minute SPOC cadence where 4–8 shallow transits fell just short of the multi-sector alert threshold.
- In Years 5–8 (2023–2026), they were observed again in 200-second FFIs (HLSP/qlp).
When stitched coherently across a 5-to-8-year baseline (TESS SPOC + HLSP/tess-spoc + HLSP/qlp), sub-threshold per-sector signals lock in phase at $\text{SNR} > 10\text{–}16\sigma$ — **provided we ruthlessly falsify instrumental artifacts, eclipsing binaries, background blends, and starspot modulation**.
This repository turns that search into an **open, git-native, machine-verified collaborative benchmark** where human researchers, citizen scientists, and AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, Cursor) collaborate via Pull Requests:
1. **Master Index of What Has Already Been Found (catalog/ & docs/EXISTING_DISCOVERIES_INDEX.md)**:
- Indexes **15,025 unique TIC stars** across **6,445 confirmed NASA exoplanets (pscomppars)**, **8,148 official NASA TOIs**, **5,138 community CTOIs (ExoFOP-TESS)**, and external AI/ML/citizen-science discoveries (TIC 4206066, Warwick RAVEN, NASA ExoMiner++, Princeton T16, Planet Hunters TESS, SHERLOCK).
2. **10-Gate Adversarial Falsification Engine (scripts/vet_candidate.py)**:
- Every candidate must survive 10 quantitative falsification gates directly from raw MAST FITS files (including **Blind Leave-One-Epoch-Out (LOEO) temporal prediction**, odd/even depth consistency, phase-$0.5$ secondary eclipse null test, in-transit pixel centroid shift $ 0$) |
| **6** | gate6_secondary_eclipse_null | Self-luminous companions & phase-$0.5$ sub-harmonic crests | Phase $0.5 P$ anomaly has $\|\text{SNR}\| 0$, **Jackknife SNR** $\ge 6.5\,\sigma$, and median transit depth $\ge 55\%$ of weighted depth |
| **10** | gate10_rotational_modulation_guard | Starspot rotational modulation, rational sub-harmonics & multi-harmonic spot profiles | Out-of-transit detrended amplitude across $P, \frac{2}{3}P, \frac{1}{2}P, \frac{2}{5}P, \frac{1}{3}P, \frac{1}{4}P, \frac{1}{5}P$ & joint 4-harmonic Fourier profile $