Mysterious Force Affects Pioneer 10 & 11 Probes 829
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."
Different directions (Score:5, Insightful)
Laws of Physics (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it now flamebait to (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Laws of Physics (Score:2, Insightful)
ever hear of a singularity? yeah, that is a huge hole in GR, as is reconciling what QM tells up and what GR tells us....oh, and there is this pesky problem with those probes going on now.
Re:Radiation pressure (Score:2, Insightful)
That explains it - all of the scientists have forgotten the answer in the last 12 months! It's lucky that someone as intelligent as yourself is around to correct their error. I suggest you start writing letters immediately.
Don't worry, I've already written to The Guardian to tell them how stupid they are on your behalf.
Of course, I did briefly entertain the possibility that you might be an arrogant dick, but I quickly realised how absurd that was!
Re:explanation??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Rare? It's what they do all the time! It's the very first step in every single research project, and most of the subsequent steps too.
Some religious preachers and journalists and Hollywood writers portray scientists as believing that they know everything. But for real scientists, wondering what happens is the very basis of their work.
You should read more Scientific American and less clueless tabloids.
Re:Some electromagnetic effect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Laws of Physics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Radiation pressure (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
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..."
Anomolies Like This (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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.
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?
Re:The force! (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer the equally possible explanation -- that gravity is not linear, and performs differently at large distances than it does at small ones. This can explain the effect of dark matter without all the flubberyjubbery of matter that can't be seen and can't be detected.
Re:explanation??? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, actually scientists state what they know, usually accompanied by how they know it, and how anyone can test the theory. That's what makes them scientists. Don't confuse a journalist spewing dumbed-down reports with a scientist.
>>>many times it's from the limited understanding we have and they have trouble with that.
If by "have trouble with that" you mean, "scientists like to learn and discover", you sure have a crooked way of saying it. If you mean "every time a scientist finds an unknown, they get all pissed off and make up lies to tell everyone, because they are heathen scum", then grow up. Science is here to stay.
Science as a school never said that reason precluded faith. It's the religious types who keep that torch lit, and cry when it burns them. Grow up.
Re:It's the Klingons! (Score:5, Insightful)
Logically, we must assume 1. the episode is wrong (correct assumption) or 2. the Klingon Empire is a LOT closer than you thought, Mr. Vulcan.
Re:Different directions (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Obligatory MOND post (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Different directions (Score:3, Insightful)
until tests are ran you can not assume that energy is being leaked, and if it is being leaked, why can it not be re-generated?
a gravity well can evaoperate, hawkings radiation is an example that even a deep gravity well can "leak" energy and eventually evaporate.
your question is too general to answer. Make a clearer form of your question. why do you assume that the gravity ripples are leaking energy? Why can not it exist as a resonance point?
These are the assumptions i am making based on your very limited but overly broad question.
now if you want to make it more fun, let's look at it form the folded space theory.. maybe the probes are getting near the point where space is folded back and the gravity well of the SUN is simply having an effect at that fold location? (I personally think the folded space ideas are nothing but bunk.)
Re:Why no mention of Voyagers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Attempts to test the anomaly using other spacecraft such as Galileo and the Voyager probes have proved unsuccessful
Which means they either can't tell, or the mysterious force isn't affecting them. I'm no physics expert, but I can't see why they wouldn't be able to use the doppler effect on the vgers just like they do with the pioneer probes. But if it's not affecting them, then there's either something close to the pioneer probes exerting the force, or something on or about the probes themselves. Maybe the materials used to build the other probes aren't affected by this force? Maybe it's connected to why (if this is even the case) they can't use the doppler effect? I know I'm probably way off base here...
Re:It's the Klingons! (Score:3, Insightful)
Neptune orbits at 4,504,000,000 km, so Qo'nos must be 8,647,680,000,000 km away. That's... 0.91 lightyears. Damn.
So it looks like they actually did the sums for Neptune, but skipped it for Qo'nos. Weird!
Re:Better Article On The Subject (Score:3, Insightful)
I posted a comment [slashdot.org] a good while back.
The force exerted by the Sun is 5.9 millimetres/second per second, while the force exerted by the Moon is 0.033 millimetres/second per second. If the moon were shielding gravity from the Sun (absorbing gravitons or whatever) then the Earth's gravity (9800 millimetres/second per second) would increase slightly. Maybe this would be enough to change the oscillation of pendulum. If this were the case, then a similar effect should occur during night-time, when the Sun was at the opposite side of the Earth, and being shielded by the mantle and crust of the Earth, if not the core.
Austria and Australia (Score:3, Insightful)
My point is that "affect" and "effect" sound similar but have different meanings, although etymologically they are related. Similarly, "Austria" and "Australia" sound the same and have the same etymology (they both mean "South-ia"), but are in fact two different countries in different hemispheres.
If you say that Austria thrashed the USA at cricket today, you haven't made a "grammatical error", you've made a factual error. The headline of this article is a factual error. Pioneer 10 and 11 were effected by NASA, whatever they may have been affected by since.
Re:Different directions (Score:3, Insightful)
Variable lightspeed anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dark Matter my #%@*^@! (Score:2, Insightful)
Religion is a bunch of bull crap invented to make people feel better about not understanding the universe and the laws that govern it.
Point: Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean there isn't a shred of truth in it. Dark matter is a POSSIBLE explanation to the differences that we see between what we understand and observe, but is not the only explanation.
Re:Different directions (Score:3, Insightful)
Page 99:
""..These are similiar to light waves, which are ripples of the electromagnetic field, but they are much harder to detect. Like light, they carry energy away from the objects that emit them. One would therfore expect a system of massive objects to settle down eventually to a stationary state, because the energy in any movement would be carried away by the emission of gravitational waves.....For example, the movement of the earth in its orbit round the sun produces gravitational waves. "
Re:It's the Klingons! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Laws of Physics (Score:4, Insightful)
> 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).
Newton's Laws have been known to be wrong for 90 years (they were wrong before that, too, we just didn't know it). They are *not* "perfectly" accurate for anything, from an engineer's pov or anyone elses. What you mean to say is that they are SUFFICIENTLY accurate to accomplish the task at hand. The relativistic effects at the speeds you are using are too small to be relevant, but they *do* exist, if measured accurately and precisely enough.
Re:How do they track them? (Score:2, Insightful)
They can bounce a microwave beam off a tiny little probe at that distance and measure the response? Man, that's impressive!