Redditor uses Claude Code to find a possible new planet in TESS data, pre-registers test
This_Cell_1829 · reddit · 2026-10-07
A Reddit user says they found a planet candidate 116 light-years away by analyzing NASA TESS data with Claude Code (Opus 5.5): it dims the star 0.05% every 3.18 days for about two hours, is 1.4x Earth's size, and the signal appears consistently in separate 2018, 2020, and 2025 observations. A second, weaker candidate (2.2 Earth radii, 11.13-day orbit) may orbit the same star.
Method highlights:
- 74 analyses and 1,000+ scripts in two weeks; Codex and read-only fresh agent sessions audited the work, once catching an overstated statistical claim
- A pre-registered style test: hide one year of data, predict transits from the other two — 3/3 predictions hit
- A search of 36 catalogs and 340,505 TESS alerts found no prior report
- A TESS observing proposal was approved (Program #100) for re-observation Oct 31–Nov 26; predictions and pass/fail rules were published beforehand, making the claim falsifiable
The author stresses this remains a candidate, not a confirmed planet.
More from coding & agent
- Jeffrey Emanuel's "say no to process" agent skill kills Codex ceremony output — used hundreds of times a day — doodlestein · 2026-10-08
- a16z backs Preference Model, which open-sources Karotte RL environment framework battle-tested by 1M+ evals — a16z · 2026-10-08
- Every's agent skims meeting notes and only pings you when your name comes up — here's the 4-step setup — every · 2026-10-08
- Exa's setup page swaps dev docs for a copy-paste prompt your coding agent runs — josh_bickett · 2026-10-08
- Haiku 5.5 targets high-volume tasks, works as a coding subagent with Opus/Sonnet — claudeai · 2026-10-08
- Non-coder runs his entire business on an army of Claude Opus 5.5 agents — EXM7777 · 2026-10-08