JabbaTheFart writes "The Guardian is writing that something strange is tugging at America's oldest spacecraft. As the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes head towards distant stars, scientists have discovered that the craft - launched more than 30 years ago - appear to be in the grip of a mysterious force that is holding them back as they sweep out of the solar system.
Some researchers say unseen 'dark matter' may permeate the universe and that this is affecting the Pioneers' passage. Others say flaws in our understanding of the laws of gravity best explain the crafts' wayward behaviour."
The logic on which you draw your assumption seems to be flawed.
Contact with the Klingon empire was first made in 2151. Therefore, it is only logical to assume that they were nowhere near human space in 2004. It is most likely that the phenomenon in question was an anomaly caused by temporal vortex flux.
What's interesting about this is the craft went in different directions out of the solar system, which rules out something like the mass of an unknown body in the outer solar system affecting their flight.
It could be an example of gravitiontational rippling.
a very large gravity well may have a ripple that exists some distance from the center of the gravity well. The sun's gravity well is big enough for us to notice this while the sun and other planets we did not notice it. we MIGHT be able to notice something if we look at the data as these probes appriached and passed juipter.
speaking of gravitational rippling, maybe you can answer a question for me... Special relativity says there isn't any particular speed that is at rest, right? Speeds are always relative, right?
But gravitational rippling leaks energy until the object is at rest, right? So there must be a rest state of zero speed.. so there must be an absolute zero speed?
Gravitation rippling only happens to accelerating objects, so it does not violate relativity. It works the same way as brensstrahlung (ie., breaking radiation). It is believed that accelerating objects emit gravitons (gravity particles) in the same way accelerating charges emit photons (electromagnetic particles). The braking is relative to the object causing the acceleration.
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday September 13 2004, @07:42AM (#10234310)
I can forgive the mods not knowing the difference between affect and effect, but can we please all donate a penny to buy the editors an English textbook?
The key issue here is that the verb "to effect" is meaningful and useful, and we are rapidly losing it through ignorant misuse.
One can advocate a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to language, but that isn't the same as defending actual errors in widely-understood words. Saying "effect" when you mean "affect" isn't like saying "ain't" when you mean "isn't", it's like saying "Austria" when you mean "Australia".
I remember reading a quite striking short story about a crystal shell surrounding every solar system and it can only be broken from inside. It works like a semi-permeable interface, preventing aliens coming/communicating inside. A civilization will only manage to get outside of the shell by breaking the "egg". I can't remember the writer of the story nor the name but I think I read it on either Asimov or Analog in the last couple of years. Can anyone recall this story and remind me of its writer please?
It is also thought that dark matter is at the centre of galaxies [abc.net.au]
Could explain a lot of things, e.g. the expansion/contraction of the universe. Judging by the amount of "tangible" matter in the universe, there is no way to halt the expansion, and it will go on forever.
However, if there is dark matter, it could hold enough gravity to halt expansion and force the big crunch.
Lots of info on this sort of stuff here [theage.com.au]
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday September 13 2004, @07:40AM (#10234289)
It is neat to see things like this which challenge our understanding of relatively basic things like gravity. Part of me is still hopeful that we will find some holes in the relativity theory. More than a few scientists have pointed out other inconsistencies between observations and relativity. It would be nice not to be constrained by this whole 186,000 miles per second thing:)
As a sci fi reader, I of course hope that light speed is a breakable barrier.
As someone who studied physics, I'm not too hopeful. The speed limit isn't the result of a few shaky theories, but rather a pretty deeply engrained part of our understanding. If it turns out not to be true, then most of the physics that has been done for the past 150 years is flat out wrong. It would be like discovering that DNA isn't where the genetic code is held, as disasterous, and at this point in our study, as unlikely.
If it turns out not to be true, then most of the physics that has been done for the past 150 years is flat out wrong
Using the same logic, you could say that Newton's Laws have been "flat out wrong" for the past 90 years, but for many, many, applications, from automobiles to rocket boosters, they are "perfectly" accurate (from an engineer's point of view).
It would be nice not to be constrained by this whole 186,000 miles per second thing:)
Seriously! I agree. Recently I've been playing around with Celestia [sourceforge.net], and it really gives you a good idea of how freaking BIG the universe is. (download it and check it out).
Setting your speed at "c" and it takes a while to get out of the Solar System. Set it at a few AUs per second and you can clear the solar system more quickly, but once you are out, it seems like you are not moving at all. Once you accelerate to a light year per second, things start moving a bit, especially the neighboring stars, but it is still pretty slow going on a galactic scale. If you want to get out beyond the galaxy, I recommend going perpendicular to the galactic plane and accelerating to a few thousand light years per second (ummm...that is rather fast, don't you think).
Doing this gives you a pretty good perspective on things. Once you are in inter-galactic space, if you aren't moving about a thousand light years per second, it seems like you aren't moving at all. For an even better perspective of mixing size and speed, try manually flying back to Sol. It seems easy, and you even decelerate a bit, but it seems like you are going kind of slow until you suddenly zip past Sol doing about 100 light years per second. Go back and try again.
Back to the original point, yeah the speed of light is fast, but on a galactic and/or universal scale, it isn't that fast. I too hope they either find some loopholes in relativity, or find some loopholes in the universe (such as Asimov's idea of Hyperspace), or we won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
Yeah, I know this is deeply in the realm of Science Fiction, but I'm kind of hoping that it becomes Science Fact someday...
This is exactly what those probes were launched for. It's great that they're not behaving as predicted. When everything behaves as we expect we don't learn much, but verifiable errors in our predictions can open entire dimensions of study that we didn't see before.
To paraphrase Carl Sagan, the real moments of discovery aren't when someone shouts, "Eureka!" but sometime before that when someone mumbles, "Hm, that's weird..."
The Bush Administration is altering the laws of gravity in order to distract us from the situation in Iraq. A bill in Congress right now will nullify the law of gravity as we know it, taking away the rights of individuals to remain firmly planted on the Earth.
Don't forget that US law still only applies to the US, so the rest of us will be perfectly safe as you float off into space. Of course, as long as Congress don't also take your guns away you'll at least be able to steer until you run out of ammo.
If there was Pushing gravity [everything2.org] (also discussed before on/. [slashdot.org] ), or just a similar effect, all our calculations and measurements of gravity would be off a little.
I have no idea whether the effect would be so big though.
Some (Majorana?) even thought some kinds of matter were radiating "pushing gravity", but I'm really leaning dangerously far out of the window by guessing that this is the way that a black hole a the center of the galaxy causes the anomaly in galactic rotation curve that is observed (that anomaly suggests more (gravitational) pull, too.)
Please note that the arguments derived from thinking about Pushing gravity might apply even if gravity is not considered pushing by the physics used.
After reading the article I had a flashback about old computer games, where "mysterious force" would tug you back when you reached the end of the area.
How funny it would be if our world ended after Pluto and the stars would only be 'a painted backcloth'. I wonder what kinda effect it would have on our society. Scientist would propably spend years trying to explaing the phenomena, until one day a human could travel to the edge and verify the obvious.
Or maybe the aliens that run our world on their supercomputer have not yet coded the rest of the universe. Let's wait for few more years and see if 'the mysterious force' has been removed:)
Unlike Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2 continue to transmit to Earth. In fact, Voyager 1 is further from the sun (93.1 AU) than the furthest Pioneer (86.3 AU).
Has this effect been observed as to the Voyagers?
Excellent illustration (updated daily!) of all these probes and their vitals (trajectories, distance, speed, etc.) at Heavens-Above [heavens-above.com].
IMHO, the pioneer probes are/were 'spin stabilised', i.e. are constantly rotating in order to keep them stable. This helps to cancel out most forces interfering with them during their journey (i.e. solar wind, light pressure, thermal radation, outgassing etc), and therefore makes it easier to extract the resudial unexplained force. However, he Voyager probes are '3-axis-stabilised', i.e. they maintain their orientation in space by means of gyros and thrusters. (This is a very good idea for steadly pointing cameras at planets as you fly past.) But, as a result, it is much harder, if not impossible, to compensate for the above mentioned forces. The voyagers are probably also affected by the same unexplained force, but this small force is overwhelemed by the uncertantinty of the magmitude of the other forces acting on those spacecraft. Therefore, there is not much point mentioning them!
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday September 13 2004, @08:17AM (#10234606)
As it happens, The Economist recently ran an article addressing some of these issues. The article also provides context and perspective that should be of interest to those participating in this discussion. For convenience, the full text is reproduced below; it is also accessible online [economist.com] (may require paid subscription).
An unexplained effect during solar eclipses casts doubt on General Relativity
"ASSUME nothing" is a good motto in science. Even the humble pendulum may spring a surprise on you. In 1954 Maurice Allais, a French economist who would go on to win, in 1988, the Nobel prize in his subject, decided to observe and record the movements of a pendulum over a period of 30 days. Coincidentally, one of his observations took place during a solar eclipse. When the moon passed in front of the sun, the pendulum unexpectedly started moving a bit faster than it should have done.
Since that first observation, the "Allais effect", as it is now called, has confounded physicists. If the effect is real, it could indicate a hitherto unperceived flaw in General Relativity--the current explanation of how gravity works.
That would be a bombshell--and an ironic one, since it was observations taken during a solar eclipse (of the way that light is bent when it passes close to the sun) which established General Relativity in the first place. So attempts to duplicate Dr Allais's observation are important. However, they have had mixed success, leading sceptics to question whether there was anything to be explained. Now Chris Duif, a researcher at the Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, has reviewed the evidence. According to a paper he has just posted on arXiv.org [arxiv.org], an online publication archive, the effect is real, unexplained, and could be linked to another anomaly involving a pair of American spacecraft.
Three different types of instrument have been used to detect the Allais effect. The first are conventional pendulums, such as the one Dr Allais used originally. The second are torsion pendulums, which work by hanging a bar that has weights at each end from a wire. As the wire twists back and forth, the bar rotates in pendulum-like motion. The third are gravimeters, which are, in essence, very precise scales. All of these instruments measure the acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface, a quantity known as g. The Allais effect is a small additional acceleration, so tiny that it would take an apple about a day to fall from a tree branch if it were the only gravitational effect around.
Allez, Allais
Dr Duif has examined various conventional explanations for the Allais effect. He finds the most obvious suggestion--that it is a mere measuring error--unlikely, because similar results have been found by many different groups, operating independently and, in at least one case, without knowledge of Dr Allais's results.
He also discounts several explanations that rely on conventional physical changes that might take place during an eclipse. One of these is that the anomaly is caused by the seismic disturbance induced as crowds of sightseers move into and out of a place where an eclipse is visible. That seems unlikely, given that one of the experiments with a positive result was conducted in a remote area of China while another that had a negative result took place in Belgium, one of the most crowded parts of the planet. Dr Duif also considered the possibility that, because the moon's shadow cools the air during an eclipse, this cooler, and thus denser, air might exert a different gravitational pull on the instruments. This change could, he reckon
Hmm, I've read about this on Slashdot before, and I'm pretty sure I've read about Modified Newtonian Dynamics before.
The gist is this: MOND is an alternative to the "dark matter" explanation. It makes a modification to newton's laws of motion, whereby gravitational strength. The equation F = ma is well known, but with MOND the gravitational inverse square law changes to an inverse linear law when the acceleration due to gravity falls below a critical value, which is very small (i.e. you get pretty far away from the source of gravity).
This explains most of the observed behavior that is currently explained by dark matter, including the rotation of galaxies which seem to defy newton's laws. Unfortunately, there's still no derived theoretical basis for MOND; as of now it's a rather arbitrary explanation with equations that just seem to work pretty well, and many physicists do not take MOND seriously. Then again, "dark matter" seems just as silly.
A more in-depth explanation is available here. [thefreedictionary.com]
Interestingly, the MOND critical value for the acceleration (a0) turns out to be the speed of light divided by the age of the universe.
I like the following explanation of the anomalous acceleration. No dark matter/20 dimensions/new gravity theory needed here. A small amount of dust in the kuiper-belt that transfers momentum with the probe should be enough to explain the slowdown. Look at:
http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/Anomalous/Accelerat ion.html [newtonphysics.on.ca]
True that. Admitting uncertainty is the first step of science..."we don't know for sure why this is, so we'll propose a hypothesis, test it, and if the results don't clarify anything, we'll propose another one."
I don't know why people are shocked, or take it as a sign of supernatural causes every time a scientist "isn't sure." They're never sure. If they were sure, they wouldn't be scientists. Science takes a certain amount of confidence in a possibility, but being "sure" is the first step towards fudging data that's inexplicable. The universe is infinitely large and thus infinitely complex, and we'd only been empirically studying it for a few thousand years. Most of our in-depth insights have taken place in the past 200 years, and many clarifications and exceptions have taken place in the past 50, and even the past 20.
Scientists have a notoriously matter-of-fact attitude that leads some people to believe that science believes itself to be infallible. It doesn't. But due to the need for strict controls, even on language, to avoid confusion between scientists, even false and preposterous assumptions need to be stated matter-of-factly. Scientists don't claim to have all the answers...they just claim to have some very realistic (and repeatable) ones.
Guess what? Science is _based_ on not knowing everything.
Scientists not admitting they don't know everything? Well, gee, I thought they even told you exactly what they don't know yet and/or are trying to find out, each time a new experiment is performed. Whenever a new particle accelerator is built, whenever a new probe is sent into space, whenever someone builds a bigger telescope, whenever they bury some sophisticated particle detector deep, they'll conveniently tell you exactly which part of the unknown they're trying to probe.
If anyone believed we already have the absolute truth already, we wouldn't need those. In fact, we could just as well shut down the existing ones and send everyone home. Nothing left to discover, no?
But that's not the case.
The whole idea of science is that we don't know everything. If you want absolute truths, those are that-a-way, through the door marked "religion". Science is in the other direction.
In science at most we might have a good enough approximation for stuff we're able to measure already. And for a given class of problems.
E.g., Newton's mechanics are accurate enough for everyday stuff: things weighing between milligrams and thousands of tonnes, at relatively slow speeds. If you move away from that in any way, the approximation is no longer enough, and more detailed theories become necessary. That's why we have relativism, quantum mechanics, astrophysics, and so on.
We do _not_ however have an explanation for stuff noone has measured before, or for problems which didn't even exist before.
E.g., for what happens at sub-atomic particles under a certain size. That's why we keep building bigger accelerators. 'Cause we have no clue what happens there, why or how. We're trying to find out, 'cause so far noone measured anything in that range.
E.g., for exactly the problem in this article. Noone before had measured what happens when you chuck a rock (or a spacecraft) far enough outside the solar system. It's a new problem, and, yes, the scientists are very open about it: noone has a clue what's happening there or why.
But that's ok. That's how science work.
What will happen is that we devise new experiments, measure some more, and then we'll have enough data to make a better theory. One which will allow us to chuck spacecrafts better.
See, for all its "absolute truths" and the knee-jerk jumping to point fingers at scientists, that's one thing that religion can't do: eventually tell you _how_ to do something right.
Everything you see about you, such as the electronics in the computer you typed that on, didn't happen because someone shrugged and said "uh... guess because God wanted it to be so". It came to be possible because some scientists openly admitted what they don't know yet, and proceeded to measure and devise theories.
(And someone will point out that engineers were also needed to make an actual device based on those theories. Indeed. Personally I just think of engineers as a branch of science. The applied kind of science, as opposed to the theoretical kind. Still science either way.)
Theories which don't just explain why something already happened, but how to make it happen again. And how to control it when you make it happen. How to make it happen slightly differently.
But again, it invariably started with someone saying "well, we have no bloody clue why _that_ happens. We'll need to measure some more and do some serious thinking."
Personally I just think of engineers as a branch of science. The applied kind of science, as opposed to the theoretical kind. Still science either way.
Personally? In German the field of engineering is called "Ingenieurwissenschaften", i.e. engineer sciences.
>>>I am can't wait to see the scientist explanations of this. One thing that is rare for them to admit is not knowing why something happens.
What are you smoking? You make it sound like the explanation is on page 95 of the bible.. "And lo, the angel gabriel spake unto the herdsmen, and said: Take thee every herb bearing fruit... and the mysterious force effecting Pioneer 10 & 11 is from God doing his Silver Surfer impression."
Who modded this troll insightful? For shame. Parent post has zero redeeming value.
If science thought it knew everything, scientists wouldn't do experiments.
Galileo? Darwin? Helloooo? Earth to creationists... Stop picking fights with us. Science is not religion. If you think the world isn't big enough for both, go read St Thomas Aquinas (cliff notes: he philosphised that REASON and FAITH were BOTH part of the human mind and that each had it's sphere of relevance, eg, faith won't stop a bullet, but reason can help you design a flak jacket).
For the religious apologists, I held back the flamage, so beat it. And in case parent REALLY thinks this is beyond the ken of science, dude, the friggin' story has two educated guesses as to why it happens. Seriously, do you think you're making converts by posting that ignorant crap?
The last signals were recieved from Pioneer 10 in early 2003, but telmetry stopped almost a year before. From the Feb. 25, 2003 press release that "pronounced" Pioneer 10 dead:
RELEASE: 03-082HQ
PIONEER 10 SPACECRAFT SENDS LAST SIGNAL
After more than 30 years, it appears the venerable Pioneer 10 spacecraft has sent its last signal to Earth. Pioneer's last, very weak signal was received on Jan. 22, 2003.
NASA engineers report Pioneer 10's radioisotope power source has decayed, and it may not have enough power to send additional transmissions to Earth. NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) did not detect a signal during the last contact attempt Feb. 7, 2003. The previous three contacts, including the Jan. 22 signal, were very faint with no telemetry received. The last time a Pioneer 10 contact returned telemetry data was April 27, 2002. NASA has no additional contact attempts planned for Pioneer 10.
I heard other things. If you read TFA, you'll notice that they are talking about a force acting equally on *both* probes. Claims that this is a new effect are a bit too early, though.
Occam's razor doesn't mean that scientists should stop investigating because there _may be_ a simple explanation. If there are interesting, unexplained things, one has to go down and calculate every traditional force(/space time curvature) which may act on the spacecraft; numerical simulations of the radiation pressure of the RTGs, taking the geometry of the space craft into account. Other external electromagnetic forces. Etc.pp.
Then, there will probably be a traditional explanation of the effect. If not send some probes out too further investigate the effect. After all, experimental physics is not only about testing the theory's POV, it is also about exploring the world and finding new effects. You can have wrong calculations by theoreticians even in such fields where there is a fundamental theory capable of explaining everything. (This includes nearly every field of physics today - except nuclear/particle physics and astrophysics).
And why wasn't it seen until now? And why did it start effecting the two craft at the same time? Provide a few more details of the radiation pressure hypothesis, or better a few links and I'll be more apt to believe you. Until then I remain skeptical. The Pioneer Anomaly has been around for a little while, long enough to generate more than a few ( Google Search of Citebase) [google.com]) papers written to try to explain the anomaly. Dismissing them all out of hand in two sentences is NOT good science, but then hey, this is Slashdot, what do I expect?
It is most certainly not radiation pressure from the RTGs.
If you would care to read the original 54 page article gr-qc/0104064 at http://arxiv.org/ [arxiv.org] you would have noticed that the original authors took serious effort to account for the radiation pressure from the RTGs and could make it in no way large enough to account for the anomaly.
It's the Klingons! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's the Klingons! (Score:5, Funny)
Contact with the Klingon empire was first made in 2151. Therefore, it is only logical to assume that they were nowhere near human space in 2004. It is most likely that the phenomenon in question was an anomaly caused by temporal vortex flux.
Parent
Re:It's the Klingons! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
That's no Moon... (Score:5, Funny)
It's a SPACE STATION!!!
Parent
Different directions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Different directions (Score:5, Interesting)
a very large gravity well may have a ripple that exists some distance from the center of the gravity well. The sun's gravity well is big enough for us to notice this while the sun and other planets we did not notice it. we MIGHT be able to notice something if we look at the data as these probes appriached and passed juipter.
Parent
Re:Different directions (Score:5, Interesting)
Special relativity says there isn't any particular speed that is at rest, right? Speeds are always relative, right?
But gravitational rippling leaks energy until the object is at rest, right? So there must be a rest state of zero speed.. so there must be an absolute zero speed?
Parent
Re:Different directions (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
for the love of god, (Score:5, Informative)
Re:for the love of god, (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Or... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Or... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
Certainly in his anthology "The River of Time" there was a story called " The Crystal Spheres [davidbrin.com]"
Parent
Matrix (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Matrix (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Matrix (Score:5, Funny)
"What you must realize is that there is no probe."
Parent
The force! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:blask holes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Laws of Physics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Laws of Physics (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who studied physics, I'm not too hopeful. The speed limit isn't the result of a few shaky theories, but rather a pretty deeply engrained part of our understanding. If it turns out not to be true, then most of the physics that has been done for the past 150 years is flat out wrong. It would be like discovering that DNA isn't where the genetic code is held, as disasterous, and at this point in our study, as unlikely.
Parent
Re:Laws of Physics (Score:5, Insightful)
Using the same logic, you could say that Newton's Laws have been "flat out wrong" for the past 90 years, but for many, many, applications, from automobiles to rocket boosters, they are "perfectly" accurate (from an engineer's point of view).
Parent
I agree (but slightly OT) (Score:5, Interesting)
Setting your speed at "c" and it takes a while to get out of the Solar System. Set it at a few AUs per second and you can clear the solar system more quickly, but once you are out, it seems like you are not moving at all. Once you accelerate to a light year per second, things start moving a bit, especially the neighboring stars, but it is still pretty slow going on a galactic scale. If you want to get out beyond the galaxy, I recommend going perpendicular to the galactic plane and accelerating to a few thousand light years per second (ummm...that is rather fast, don't you think).
Doing this gives you a pretty good perspective on things. Once you are in inter-galactic space, if you aren't moving about a thousand light years per second, it seems like you aren't moving at all. For an even better perspective of mixing size and speed, try manually flying back to Sol. It seems easy, and you even decelerate a bit, but it seems like you are going kind of slow until you suddenly zip past Sol doing about 100 light years per second. Go back and try again.
Back to the original point, yeah the speed of light is fast, but on a galactic and/or universal scale, it isn't that fast. I too hope they either find some loopholes in relativity, or find some loopholes in the universe (such as Asimov's idea of Hyperspace), or we won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
Yeah, I know this is deeply in the realm of Science Fiction, but I'm kind of hoping that it becomes Science Fact someday...
Parent
Re:Laws of Physics (Score:5, Insightful)
To paraphrase Carl Sagan, the real moments of discovery aren't when someone shouts, "Eureka!" but sometime before that when someone mumbles, "Hm, that's weird..."
Parent
Re:Laws of Physics (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
*mumbles* (Score:5, Funny)
A bit of editing would have helped (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, don't mean to sound curmudgeonly and grumpy and so forth, but so few people get this right that I can't stand by and let it slide.
I'll put the cantankerous old grouch away now...
Re:A bit of editing would have helped (Score:5, Funny)
("Effect" as a verb means "to bring about or execute".)
Parent
Re:A bit of editing would have helped (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Other Slashdot Story (from 3 years ago) (Score:5, Informative)
Conspiracy Theory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Conspiracy Theory (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
sorry 'bout that (Score:5, Funny)
Better Article On The Subject (Score:5, Informative)
Pushing gravity (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no idea whether the effect would be so big though.
Some (Majorana?) even thought some kinds of matter were radiating "pushing gravity", but I'm really leaning dangerously far out of the window by guessing that this is the way that a black hole a the center of the galaxy causes the anomaly in galactic rotation curve that is observed (that anomaly suggests more (gravitational) pull, too.)
Please note that the arguments derived from thinking about Pushing gravity might apply even if gravity is not considered pushing by the physics used.
Funny coincident (Score:5, Funny)
How funny it would be if our world ended after Pluto and the stars would only be 'a painted backcloth'. I wonder what kinda effect it would have on our society. Scientist would propably spend years trying to explaing the phenomena, until one day a human could travel to the edge and verify the obvious.
Or maybe the aliens that run our world on their supercomputer have not yet coded the rest of the universe. Let's wait for few more years and see if 'the mysterious force' has been removed
Why no mention of Voyagers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has this effect been observed as to the Voyagers?
Excellent illustration (updated daily!) of all these probes and their vitals (trajectories, distance, speed, etc.) at Heavens-Above [heavens-above.com].
Re:Why no mention of Voyagers? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, he Voyager probes are '3-axis-stabilised', i.e. they maintain their orientation in space by means of gyros and thrusters. (This is a very good idea for steadly pointing cameras at planets as you fly past.)
But, as a result, it is much harder, if not impossible, to compensate for the above mentioned forces.
The voyagers are probably also affected by the same unexplained force, but this small force is overwhelemed by the uncertantinty of the magmitude of the other forces acting on those spacecraft. Therefore, there is not much point mentioning them!
Parent
Gravitational anomalies (Score:5, Interesting)
As it happens, The Economist recently ran an article addressing some of these issues. The article also provides context and perspective that should be of interest to those participating in this discussion. For convenience, the full text is reproduced below; it is also accessible online [economist.com] (may require paid subscription).
----
Gravitational anomalies
An invisible hand?
Aug 19th 2004
From The Economist print edition
[Image] [economist.com]
An unexplained effect during solar eclipses casts doubt on General Relativity
"ASSUME nothing" is a good motto in science. Even the humble pendulum may spring a surprise on you. In 1954 Maurice Allais, a French economist who would go on to win, in 1988, the Nobel prize in his subject, decided to observe and record the movements of a pendulum over a period of 30 days. Coincidentally, one of his observations took place during a solar eclipse. When the moon passed in front of the sun, the pendulum unexpectedly started moving a bit faster than it should have done.
Since that first observation, the "Allais effect", as it is now called, has confounded physicists. If the effect is real, it could indicate a hitherto unperceived flaw in General Relativity--the current explanation of how gravity works.
That would be a bombshell--and an ironic one, since it was observations taken during a solar eclipse (of the way that light is bent when it passes close to the sun) which established General Relativity in the first place. So attempts to duplicate Dr Allais's observation are important. However, they have had mixed success, leading sceptics to question whether there was anything to be explained. Now Chris Duif, a researcher at the Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, has reviewed the evidence. According to a paper he has just posted on arXiv.org [arxiv.org], an online publication archive, the effect is real, unexplained, and could be linked to another anomaly involving a pair of American spacecraft.
Three different types of instrument have been used to detect the Allais effect. The first are conventional pendulums, such as the one Dr Allais used originally. The second are torsion pendulums, which work by hanging a bar that has weights at each end from a wire. As the wire twists back and forth, the bar rotates in pendulum-like motion. The third are gravimeters, which are, in essence, very precise scales. All of these instruments measure the acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface, a quantity known as g. The Allais effect is a small additional acceleration, so tiny that it would take an apple about a day to fall from a tree branch if it were the only gravitational effect around.
Allez, Allais
Dr Duif has examined various conventional explanations for the Allais effect. He finds the most obvious suggestion--that it is a mere measuring error--unlikely, because similar results have been found by many different groups, operating independently and, in at least one case, without knowledge of Dr Allais's results.
He also discounts several explanations that rely on conventional physical changes that might take place during an eclipse. One of these is that the anomaly is caused by the seismic disturbance induced as crowds of sightseers move into and out of a place where an eclipse is visible. That seems unlikely, given that one of the experiments with a positive result was conducted in a remote area of China while another that had a negative result took place in Belgium, one of the most crowded parts of the planet. Dr Duif also considered the possibility that, because the moon's shadow cools the air during an eclipse, this cooler, and thus denser, air might exert a different gravitational pull on the instruments. This change could, he reckon
Obligatory MOND post (Score:5, Interesting)
The gist is this: MOND is an alternative to the "dark matter" explanation. It makes a modification to newton's laws of motion, whereby gravitational strength.
The equation F = ma is well known, but with MOND the gravitational inverse square law changes to an inverse linear law when the acceleration due to gravity falls below a critical value, which is very small (i.e. you get pretty far away from the source of gravity).
This explains most of the observed behavior that is currently explained by dark matter, including the rotation of galaxies which seem to defy newton's laws. Unfortunately, there's still no derived theoretical basis for MOND; as of now it's a rather arbitrary explanation with equations that just seem to work pretty well, and many physicists do not take MOND seriously. Then again, "dark matter" seems just as silly.
A more in-depth explanation is available here. [thefreedictionary.com]
Interestingly, the MOND critical value for the acceleration (a0) turns out to be the speed of light divided by the age of the universe.
Dust from the kuiper belt is slowing down probes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:explanation??? (Score:5, Funny)
Only if by "rare" you mean "all the time."
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Re:explanation??? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why people are shocked, or take it as a sign of supernatural causes every time a scientist "isn't sure." They're never sure. If they were sure, they wouldn't be scientists. Science takes a certain amount of confidence in a possibility, but being "sure" is the first step towards fudging data that's inexplicable. The universe is infinitely large and thus infinitely complex, and we'd only been empirically studying it for a few thousand years. Most of our in-depth insights have taken place in the past 200 years, and many clarifications and exceptions have taken place in the past 50, and even the past 20.
Scientists have a notoriously matter-of-fact attitude that leads some people to believe that science believes itself to be infallible. It doesn't. But due to the need for strict controls, even on language, to avoid confusion between scientists, even false and preposterous assumptions need to be stated matter-of-factly. Scientists don't claim to have all the answers...they just claim to have some very realistic (and repeatable) ones.
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Ah, another religious nut? (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists not admitting they don't know everything? Well, gee, I thought they even told you exactly what they don't know yet and/or are trying to find out, each time a new experiment is performed. Whenever a new particle accelerator is built, whenever a new probe is sent into space, whenever someone builds a bigger telescope, whenever they bury some sophisticated particle detector deep, they'll conveniently tell you exactly which part of the unknown they're trying to probe.
If anyone believed we already have the absolute truth already, we wouldn't need those. In fact, we could just as well shut down the existing ones and send everyone home. Nothing left to discover, no?
But that's not the case.
The whole idea of science is that we don't know everything. If you want absolute truths, those are that-a-way, through the door marked "religion". Science is in the other direction.
In science at most we might have a good enough approximation for stuff we're able to measure already. And for a given class of problems.
E.g., Newton's mechanics are accurate enough for everyday stuff: things weighing between milligrams and thousands of tonnes, at relatively slow speeds. If you move away from that in any way, the approximation is no longer enough, and more detailed theories become necessary. That's why we have relativism, quantum mechanics, astrophysics, and so on.
We do _not_ however have an explanation for stuff noone has measured before, or for problems which didn't even exist before.
E.g., for what happens at sub-atomic particles under a certain size. That's why we keep building bigger accelerators. 'Cause we have no clue what happens there, why or how. We're trying to find out, 'cause so far noone measured anything in that range.
E.g., for exactly the problem in this article. Noone before had measured what happens when you chuck a rock (or a spacecraft) far enough outside the solar system. It's a new problem, and, yes, the scientists are very open about it: noone has a clue what's happening there or why.
But that's ok. That's how science work.
What will happen is that we devise new experiments, measure some more, and then we'll have enough data to make a better theory. One which will allow us to chuck spacecrafts better.
See, for all its "absolute truths" and the knee-jerk jumping to point fingers at scientists, that's one thing that religion can't do: eventually tell you _how_ to do something right.
Everything you see about you, such as the electronics in the computer you typed that on, didn't happen because someone shrugged and said "uh... guess because God wanted it to be so". It came to be possible because some scientists openly admitted what they don't know yet, and proceeded to measure and devise theories.
(And someone will point out that engineers were also needed to make an actual device based on those theories. Indeed. Personally I just think of engineers as a branch of science. The applied kind of science, as opposed to the theoretical kind. Still science either way.)
Theories which don't just explain why something already happened, but how to make it happen again. And how to control it when you make it happen. How to make it happen slightly differently.
But again, it invariably started with someone saying "well, we have no bloody clue why _that_ happens. We'll need to measure some more and do some serious thinking."
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Re:Ah, another religious nut? (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally? In German the field of engineering is called "Ingenieurwissenschaften", i.e. engineer sciences.
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deep breath.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you smoking? You make it sound like the explanation is on page 95 of the bible.. "And lo, the angel gabriel spake unto the herdsmen, and said: Take thee every herb bearing fruit... and the mysterious force effecting Pioneer 10 & 11 is from God doing his Silver Surfer impression."
Who modded this troll insightful? For shame. Parent post has zero redeeming value.
If science thought it knew everything, scientists wouldn't do experiments.
Galileo? Darwin? Helloooo? Earth to creationists... Stop picking fights with us. Science is not religion. If you think the world isn't big enough for both, go read St Thomas Aquinas (cliff notes: he philosphised that REASON and FAITH were BOTH part of the human mind and that each had it's sphere of relevance, eg, faith won't stop a bullet, but reason can help you design a flak jacket).
For the religious apologists, I held back the flamage, so beat it. And in case parent REALLY thinks this is beyond the ken of science, dude, the friggin' story has two educated guesses as to why it happens. Seriously, do you think you're making converts by posting that ignorant crap?
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Re:How do they track them? (Score:5, Informative)
RELEASE: 03-082HQ PIONEER 10 SPACECRAFT SENDS LAST SIGNAL After more than 30 years, it appears the venerable Pioneer 10 spacecraft has sent its last signal to Earth. Pioneer's last, very weak signal was received on Jan. 22, 2003. NASA engineers report Pioneer 10's radioisotope power source has decayed, and it may not have enough power to send additional transmissions to Earth. NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) did not detect a signal during the last contact attempt Feb. 7, 2003. The previous three contacts, including the Jan. 22 signal, were very faint with no telemetry received. The last time a Pioneer 10 contact returned telemetry data was April 27, 2002. NASA has no additional contact attempts planned for Pioneer 10.
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Re:Radiation pressure (Score:5, Interesting)
If you read TFA, you'll notice that they are talking about a force acting equally on *both* probes.
Claims that this is a new effect are a bit too early, though.
Occam's razor doesn't mean that scientists should stop investigating because there _may be_ a simple explanation. If there are interesting, unexplained things, one has to go down and calculate every traditional force(/space time curvature) which may act on the spacecraft; numerical simulations of the radiation pressure of the RTGs, taking the geometry of the space craft into account. Other external electromagnetic forces. Etc.pp.
Then, there will probably be a traditional explanation of the effect. If not send some probes out too further investigate the effect. After all, experimental physics is not only about testing the theory's POV, it is also about exploring the world and finding new effects.
You can have wrong calculations by theoreticians even in such fields where there is a fundamental theory capable of explaining everything. (This includes nearly every field of physics today - except nuclear/particle physics and astrophysics).
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Re:Radiation pressure (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Radiation pressure (Score:5, Informative)
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