Slashdot Mirror
Hunt For Earth-Like Planets Delayed
An anonymous reader sends along this excerpt from Nature News:
"Kepler, NASA's mission to search for planets around other stars, will not be able to spot an Earth-sized planet until 2011, according to the mission's team. The delays are caused by noisy amplifiers in the telescope's electronics. ... The problem is caused by amplifiers that boost the signals from the charge-coupled devices that form the heart of the 0.95-metre telescope's 95-million-pixel photometer, which detects the light emitted from the distant stars. Three of the amplifiers are creating noise that compromises Kepler's view. The noise affects only a small portion of the data, Borucki says, but the team has to fix the software — it would be 'too cumbersome' to remove the bad data manually — so that it accounts for the noise automatically. He says that the fix should be in place by 2011."
Mindful of Halloween's approach, NASA has put up a piece looking at some of the already-known exoplanets that wouldn't be very friendly to human life.
That's alright. I'll have another glass of this sherry, and warm me arse by the fire with the hounds.
By the time day is out, we'll have roused to the horns and have the skin of these planets stretched for the drying, before the groom is done brushing nettles from the tail of the ol' horse.
Now, where'd I lay that toothpick? I could use another one of those delightful sandwiches!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Whew! I almost thought my home planet would soon be discovered! Silly humans...
Holy happy hippy crap!
I'm from Tahiti so I might have missed something in the translation, but what is wrong with this planet?
You're absolutely right. You have missed something. We already know where this planet is and hence don't have to go looking for it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Sounds like the project might have inadvertently discovered the higgs boson at some point in the future.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
That's not how project management works. The visit date is still the same, you just have two less years to implement.
Oh we'll need to cut your implementation budget by 20% as well to account for some unexpected metal price fluctuations and fully fund the HR and Fiscal department re-baselining.
Yes, and maybe if everyone at NASA wore shirts with three wolves on them they'd get more done.
It seems to have a nasty infestation of Homo Sapiens. Known for causing all sorts of problems, and terribly hard to get rid of.