The Kepler mission is "specifically designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets". It works by the occultation method. A photometer continually monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view. This data is transmitted to Earth, then analyzed. The aim is to find periodic dimming caused by extrasolar planets which cross in front of their host star. As of January 2013, there are a total of 2,740 candidates.
Kepler is part of NASA's Discovery Program of relatively low-cost primary science missions. The telescope's construction and initial operation were managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. To start with, the mission lifetime was 3.5 years. In 2012, this was extended to 2016, partly due to difficulties in processing and analyzing the huge volume of data collected by the spacecraft.
The Kepler space telescope has had to give up its planet-hunting mission because its pointing system has problems which the engineers cannot fix.
Across
Across may refer to:
Dawn Wells
Dawn Elberta Wells (October 18, 1938 – December 30, 2020) was an American actor, producer and author. She worked mostly in television. She played Mary Ann Summers in the TV series "Gilligan's Island" during the 1960s. Before that, she was Miss Nevada in 1959 and competed in the Miss America Pageant in 1960.
Wells died on December 30, 2020 at the age of 82 in Los Angeles, due to problems caused by COVID-19.
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Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives
The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the person in charge of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the Parliament of Australia. The person in charge of the upper house is the President of the Senate.
The current speaker is Tony Smith. There have been three female speakers, Joan Child, Anna Burke and Bronwyn Bishop.
The office of speaker was created by section 35 of the Constitution of Australia. The role of speaker was copied from the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
The speaker is elected by the House of Representatives in a secret ballot. The Clerk of the Australian House of Representatives holds the election. There must always be a speaker, and if the position becomes vacant, then an election must take place before the parliament can do anything else.
In Australia the speaker generally remains an active member of their party. They continue to attend party meetings, and at general elections they stand as party candidates. However, Sir Frederick Holder and Peter Slipper resigned from their parties and sat as independents.
The speaker can be opposed at a general election. Three speakers, Groom in 1929, Nairn in 1943 and Aston in 1972 have been defeated at general elections. Because the speaker is always a member of the governing party, they have not continued as speaker following a change of government. The opposition sometimes selects one of its own members for speaker after a general election. This is a symbolic act, and the governing party always supports its own candidates.
Speakers do not have to resign from Parliament at the end of their term. Two speakers, Makin and Scholes, have become cabinet ministers after having been speaker.
Most speakers have been long serving party members. Four speakers have been former government ministers Watt, Groom, Cameron and Sinclair. Martin had been a former parliamentary secretary. Snedden had been both a former minister and Leader of the Opposition. Holder and Watt were former state premiers.
The name "speaker" comes from early times in the House of Commons of England. "Mr Speaker" was the Member of Parliament chosen to speak for them to the king. The first recorded use of the term "speaker" was in 1377.
In earlier times when the king was very powerful, he would usually only call the parliament together in order to get it to agree to new taxes. The speaker would report parliament’s decisions to the king. This was dangerous if it was not what the king wanted to hear. It was not uncommon for early speakers to be beheaded, with another being "murdered". This has led to the modern symbolic show of refusal by a member on being elected speaker. In early days a member’s struggle to avoid being forced into the chair could have been completely genuine. In Australia the tradition is continued by the act of the new speaker being escorted to the chair.
The Speaker's main duty is to be the person in charge of the House. The Speaker is helped by two Deputy Speakers and a group of Acting Speakers. The second Deputy Speaker is elected from an opposition party. These often take charge during routine debates. The Speaker's role is to:
Australian parliaments can be very noisy and often members behave badly. The Speaker has powers to control their behaviour as part of the Standing Orders. The Speaker can tell a Member to leave the House for one hour. For more serious offences, the Speaker may "name" a Member. The Speaker will say "I name the Honourable Member for X." In Parliament Members are always called by the name of their electorate. The House then votes on a motion to remove the Member for 24 hours. The House also had the power to permanently expel a Member. This happened once to Hugh Mahon in 1920. In 1987 a new law was passed and Members can no longer be expelled from the Parliament.
Australian speakers are supposed to be impartial; they are meant to be fair and not to take sides in arguments. They do not take part in debates and they do not usually vote, unless in a rare case the vote is tied. They do not speak out in public about party politics except as part of their own election campaign.
Although not an active political position, the speakers see it as part of their duty to get the government's legislation passed through the house. They usually agree with the government on points of order brought up by opposition members. If the members are unhappy with the speaker they can try to pass motions of dissent, or even of no confidence. These are nearly always defeated as members vote to support their party.
There have been several famous clashes between speakers and the government.
In 2011, the Speaker Harry Jenkins survived after the house did not support his decision to name Liberal MP Bob Baldwin. The government moved that Baldwin be suspended, but he was supported by the Coalition, independent MP Rob Oakeshott and WA Nationals MP Tony Crook. The vote on suspending Baldwin for 24 hours failed 71–72. Normally the speaker would have resigned, but the House of Representatives immediately approved a motion of confidence in the speaker which was passed. Speaker Jenkins continued in office.
There have been speakers who were not members of the government. Former LNP member Peter Slipper became an independent when the Labor government offered him the job in 2011. Frederick Holder was elected for the Free Trade Party at the first federal election in 1901. He resigned from the party and was an independent speaker until his death in 1909. After the 1940 election, the United Australia Party's Walter Nairn was speaker during the John Curtin's Labor government that was formed in 1941. Opposition MP Carty Salmon was the speaker for Andrew Fisher's Labor government after the 1910 election. At the 1913 election, Labor's Charles McDonald was asked to remain as speaker by the incoming one-seat-majority Commonwealth Liberal Party. He refused but became speaker again after Labor won the 1914 election. McDonald stayed in the job even when the Nationalist Party took government.
A member who is elected speaker is given the title 'The Honourable'. With the approval of the sovereign, this title can be used for life. It is usually only given to those who have served as speaker for three years or more. Harry Jenkins, was the first speaker to ask that "The Hon." not be used for him.