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Centauri Dreams:  Kepler Slowdown: How Big a Problem?

Discover Magazine | rsslist:  Don’t Pack Your Bags Yet—New Planet-Finder Hobbled by Electronic Glitch

Highly Allochthonous:  Stuff I linked to on Twitter last week

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"Everybody knew and worried about this," says [Kepler's] Doug Caldwell. http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091030/full/news.2009.1051.html 21 days ago

Kepler launched with known hardware problem http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091030/full/news.2009.1051.html 21 days ago

RT @SETIInstitute: Noisy delay for Kepler’s planet-finding mission: http://bit.ly/3O13IH #NASA #exoplanets 21 days ago

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Kepler Slowdown: How Big a Problem?
Centauri Dreams — ... channel on Friday about the disturbing news from Kepler. The reaction was swift. The problem is caused by noisy amplifiers in the electronics of the space-borne telescope, which means the powers that be have to fiddle with the way data from Kepler is processed. This article in Nature News (thanks to all who forwarded links) spells it all out, saying that the planet hunt could be delayed. ...

Don’t Pack Your Bags Yet—New Planet-Finder Hobbled by Electronic Glitch
Discover Magazine | rsslist — ... was expected to be well on its way to detecting Earth-sized exoplanets by now, but an electronic glitch is slowing it down. The delays are caused by noisy amplifiers in the telescope’s electronics. The team is racing to fix the issue by changing the way data from the telescope is processed, but the delay could mean that ground-based observers now have the upper hand in the race to be the first to spot an Earth twin [ Nature News ]. Kepler, which was launched in March, uses the transit method to detect ...

Stuff I linked to on Twitter last week
Highly Allochthonous — ... (via @geosociety) Coping With Climate Change: Which Societies Will Do Best? http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2205 (via @YaleE360) Solar power from Sahara a step closer CSP network aims to provide 15% of Euro power by 2050. Ambitious... http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/01/solar-power-sahara-europe-desertec# Planet hunt delayed by noise problems with Kepler. Fixable though. http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091030/full/news.2009.1051.html (via @NatureNews) Read the ...