Physic Results: NET: No Earlier Than
The difficulty of doing this research, while the world looks on, can be gauged by the number of missed deadlines. Planck researchers originally hoped to have their polarization studies done this summer. Recently they had set November as their deadline, aiming to present the results at this conference in Ferrara. Likewise, the joint Bicep/Planck paper is now expected this month or in January.
Asked about this, David Spergel, a Princeton cosmologist and veteran of cosmic microwave studies who had spent the day fielding Twitter messages from Ferrara, said he had adopted an acronym often used by NASA in announcing launch dates: NET, meaning “No Earlier Than.”