Monstrous

Aliens, ETs and UFOs => Outer Space => Topic started by: Devious Viper on May 25, 2006, 07:16:23 AM

Title: The Pioneer Anomaly
Post by: Devious Viper on May 25, 2006, 07:16:23 AM
This is a tale of two spacecraft. Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972; Pioneer 11 a year later. By now both craft should be drifting off into deep space with no one watching. However, their trajectories have proved far too fascinating to ignore.

That's because something has been pulling - or pushing - on them, causing them to speed up. The resulting acceleration is tiny, less than a nanometre per second per second. That's equivalent to just one ten-billionth of the gravity at Earth's surface, but it is enough to have shifted Pioneer 10 some 400,000 kilometres off track. NASA lost touch with Pioneer 11 in 1995, but up to that point it was experiencing exactly the same deviation as its sister probe. So what is causing it?

Nobody knows. Some possible explanations have already been ruled out, including software errors, the solar wind or a fuel leak. If the cause is some gravitational effect, it is not one we know anything about. In fact, physicists are so completely at a loss that some have resorted to linking this mystery with other inexplicable phenomena.

Bruce Bassett of the University of Portsmouth, UK, has suggested that the Pioneer conundrum might have something to do with variations in alpha, the fine structure constant . Others have talked about it as arising from dark matter - but since we don't know what dark matter is, that doesn't help much either. "This is all so maddeningly intriguing," says Michael Martin Nieto of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "We only have proposals, none of which has been demonstrated."

Nieto has called for a new analysis of the early trajectory data from the craft, which he says might yield fresh clues. But to get to the bottom of the problem what scientists really need is a mission designed specifically to test unusual gravitational effects in the outer reaches of the solar system. Such a probe would cost between $300 million and $500 million and could piggyback on a future mission to the outer reaches of the solar system (www.arxiv.org/gr-qc/0411077 (http://www.arxiv.org/gr-qc/0411077)).

"An explanation will be found eventually," Nieto says. "Of course I hope it is due to new physics - how stupendous that would be. But once a physicist starts working on the basis of hope he is heading for a fall." Disappointing as it may seem, Nieto thinks the explanation for the Pioneer anomaly will eventually be found in some mundane effect, such as an unnoticed source of heat on board the craft.
Title: Re: The Pioneer Anomaly
Post by: Devious Viper on August 17, 2006, 06:42:28 AM
Scientists Study Pioneer Anomalies

Los Alamos Aug 17, 2006
U.S. scientists say mysterious changes in acceleration seen in NASA's Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes might point toward new ideas in physics. During the 1980s, NASA researchers noticed the Pioneer 11 spacecraft was slowing more quickly than expected as it neared the edge of the solar system.

A similar effect occurred with the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which was sent in the opposite direction. Finally, in 1998, John Anderson, then at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and colleagues made their findings public.

Since then, other NASA and European Space Agency probes have also exhibited unexplained changes in speed.

Anderson, now with the Global Aerospace Corp., says although it's possible an overlooked effect from ordinary physics might account for the anomalies, something more exotic could also be involved.

For example, the spacecraft trajectories could be influenced by the presence of dark matter in the solar system, says Michael Nieto of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Or maybe the laws of gravity need reworking.

"We're just throwing it out as a possibility that the anomalies might have a single cause," said Anderson. "We thought it was really time to get the community thinking about it."
Title: Re: The Pioneer Anomaly
Post by: Zak Roy Yoballa on August 21, 2006, 06:27:38 AM
There isn't much that I am aware of that would cause an increase of speed except for some sort of accelerant (which to my knowledge the probes do not have) some sort of solar wind/ perhaps a cosmic wind we are yet unaware of and gravitational forces.  if there is dark matter outside of our solar system, that may help explain some of the planetary orbit anomilies.  If dark matter exists that is :wink:.

ZRY