Kepler has very likely found al the hot Jupiters in the field of view. Almost all hot Jupiters were found in the first few weeks of the mission. The mission may be able to continue to search for Jupiter-sized planets on Earth-like orbital periods. However, it's not clear whether this is either possible or worth the expense. The cost will be high given an entirely new mode of operations will need to be designed in a relatively short space of time.

Hi, I wrote this paper: We actually looked very carefully whether this planet has cleared its neighborhood. The smallest reasonable mass we can assume for this planet is 0.01 Earth masses. With this mass it would clear its orbit of other bodies. However, if it were much further away from its star (like at the distance Pluto is from the Sun) then it would probably be considered a dwarf planet.

You can find a long description of why it is spelled that way here http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1996Obs...116..313G

The interpretation which seems most likely is that there is a planet on an outer orbit which is causing the transit timing variations. For the unseen companion to cause these transit timing variation it needs to be in an orbital resonance with the transiting planet. The most likely orbital period ratio is 4/3 for the two planets. We can rule out any stellar mass companion to the star Kepler-19 because we do not see any stellar wobble - radial velocity variation in the stellar spectrum.

Kepler looks at a region of the say covering around 115 square degrees. However, due to bandwidth limitations we are only able to download data for a limited number of pixels. We predefine around 150k pixel masks and download the data for these. While our primary mission is to find dips in brightness of stars caused by planets passing in front of them we also observe other types of time variable astrophysics. Scientists from around the world write proposals to observe interesting astrophysical phenomena and the best are chosen to have a pixel mask places around. This source was part of a proposal by a team lead by an astronomer called George Jacoby to observe planetary nebulae. There is no intention to do any planetary science with these observations.

Actually the less massive donor star is really quite non-spherical. The shape will will what is known as a Roche Lobe, this is a 3D teardrop shape. The donor will also be several time larger than the more massive primary star.

The total mass is almost certainly less than 1.4 time the mass of the sun and therefore does not have enough total mass to create supernova and a neutron star (its nowhere near massive enough to form a black hole).

Well, the IPCC report into climate change only reported a 9:1 chance of global warming being due to humans. I think most people would agree that climate change being anthropogenic is a valid arguement, even those who sceptical of the science.

Change "faceless bureaucratic peon" to members of the community who voluntarily work on ethics panels.

Who ever said that?! Thats fine. You can do whatever you want with your money. Personally I would be horrified if I found out that I would be kept as a vegetable for an extended period of time. There is such a thing as dying with dignity

Shock, Horror. Some people go into the the medical profession to help people, not keep vegetables alive and pander to the rich.

Where an Earth did you get this? It is simply not true. This idea that the NHS is awful is totally wrong. Is it perfect, no, would we like to get rid of it, hell no! Yeah we complain about the NHS all the time but we are British, we complain about everything!

Well, it might slow the passing of the Mutant Registration Act.

The Prime Minister of Italy owns the largest Italian publishing house

On that point I would certainly not disagree, the fact that the proof is not conclusive does not mean we should not act upon best available evidence. In any case reducing our reliance on oil can only be a good thing.

Sure, but you need not be conclusive to publish.

And in this case, we need not be conclusive to act. We've got a problem that won't wait around, we can't afford to wait for 3-sigma evidence. Even deferring the decision is, itself, a decision that we're making all the time. So really, all we can do is go with the best data available and do what we can.

I'm not saying it's not good, it's just not conclusive.