Posted on 02/29/2008 5:48:51 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Mysteriously, five spacecraft that flew past the Earth have each displayed unexpected anomalies in their motions.
These newfound enigmas join the so-called "Pioneer anomaly" as hints that unexplained forces may appear to act on spacecraft.
A decade ago, after rigorous analyses, anomalies were seen with the identical Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft as they hurtled out of the solar system. Both seemed to experience a tiny but unexplained constant acceleration toward the sun.
A host of explanations have been bandied about for the Pioneer anomaly. At times these are rooted in conventional science — perhaps leaks from the spacecraft have affected their trajectories. At times these are rooted in more speculative physics — maybe the law of gravity itself needs to be modified.
Now Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer John Anderson and his colleagues — who originally helped uncover the Pioneer anomaly — have discovered that five spacecraft each raced either a tiny bit faster or slower than expected when they flew past the Earth en route to other parts of the solar system.
'Humble and perplexed'
The researchers looked at six deep-space probes — Galileo I and II to Jupiter, the NEAR mission to the asteroid Eros, the Rosetta probe to a comet, Cassini to Saturn, and the MESSENGER craft to Mercury. Each spacecraft flew past the our planet to either gain or lose orbital energy in their quests to reach their eventual targets.
In five of the six flybys, the scientists have confirmed anomalies.
"I am feeling both humble and perplexed by this," said Anderson, who is now working as a retiree. "There is something very strange going on with spacecraft motions. We have no convincing explanation for either the Pioneer anomaly or the flyby anomaly."
In the one probe the researchers did not confirm a noticeable anomaly with, MESSENGER, the spacecraft approached the Earth at about latitude 31 degrees north and receded from the Earth at about latitude 32 degrees south. "This near-perfect symmetry about the equator seemed to result in a very small velocity change, in contrast to the five other flybys," Anderson explained — so small no anomaly could be confirmed.
The five other flybys involved flights whose incoming and outgoing trajectories were asymmetrical with each other in terms of their orientation with Earth's equator.
For instance, the NEAR mission approached Earth at about latitude 20 south and receded from the planet at about latitude 72 south. The spacecraft then seemed to fly 13 millimeters per second faster than expected. While this is just one-millionth of that probe's total velocity, the precision of the velocity measurements was 0.1 millimeters per second, carried out as they were using radio waves bounced off the craft. This suggests the anomaly seen is real — and one needing an explanation.
The fact this effect seems most evident with flybys most asymmetrical with respect to Earth's equator "suggests that the anomaly is related to Earth's rotation," Anderson said.
As to whether these new anomalies are linked with the Pioneer anomaly, "I would be very surprised if we have discovered two independent spacecraft anomalies," Anderson told SPACE.com. "I suspect they are connected, but I really do not know."
Unbound idea
These anomalies might be effects we see with an object possessing a spacecraft's mass, between 660 and 2,200 lbs. (300 and 1,000 kg), Anderson speculated.
"Another thing in common between the Pioneer and these flybys is what you would call an unbound orbit around a central body," Anderson said. "For instance, the Pioneers are flying out of the solar system — they're not bound to their central body, the sun. For the other flybys, the Earth is the central body. These kinds of orbits just don't occur very often in nature — it could be when you get into an unbound orbit around a central body, something goes on that's not in our standard models."
The researchers are now collaborating with German colleagues to search for possible anomalies in the Rosetta probe's second flyby of the Earth on November 13.
"We should continue to monitor spacecraft during Earth flybys. We should look carefully at newly recovered Pioneer data for more evidence of the Pioneer anomaly," Anderson added. "We should think about launching a dedicated mission on an escape trajectory from the solar system, just to look for anomalies in its motion."
Montana State University physicist Ronald Hellings, who did not participate in this study, said, "There's definitely something going on. Whether that's because of new physics or some problem with the model we have is yet to be worked out, as far as I know. A lot of people are trying to look into this."
Anderson and his colleagues will detail their latest findings in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.
It must have “something” to do with global warming...it MUST!
Weird gravitational field maybe.
Say... has anyone heard from Michael Moore lately?
Maybe a slight leakage of fuel from the positional thruster?
The solar system is filled with electricity!
Could be God having a little fun! ;-)
Very interesting. Unexplained anomolies have led to some important scientific discoveries in the past. Every question raised like this begs for an answer.
ping
Interesting.
Not sure, but I believe that all of the fly-byes I’ve seen charted go with the Earth’s rotation. Is there any that have gone against it; or from pole to pole? Gravity drag?
How about just the pull of the gravity of the sun being different than they though?
I know, I know... BUSH’s fault.
Anybody track Gore’s movements with these wobbles?
What is the zero-point field or zero-point fluctuations(ZPF)?
What is its relationship to the quantum vacuum? In the view of modern physics, the vacuum is far from empty. Take away all particles and all electromagnetic radiation and you will have an apparently empty region of space at a temperature of absolute zero. But in fact this "vacuum" will still be full of energies and particle pairs (such as positrons and electrons): the electromagnetic zero-point field, the zero-point fields of the weak and strong interactions, and the Dirac sea of negative energy particle pairs. All of these energies and particles are collectively referred to as the quantum vacuum (making the vacuum in reality a plenum). Our work so far has involved only one component of the quantum vacuum: the electromagnetic zero-point field or zero-point fluctuations. (Henceforth, unless stated otherwise, ZPF refers only to the electromagnetic ZPF.) The ZPF was a hypothesis put forward by Max Planck in 1911, and was developed by him and Walther Nernst between 1911 and 1916. In 1947 the effect of the ZPF was directly demonstrated by Willis Lamb, in a famous experiment, which Lamb himself has described as "a proof that the vacuum does not exist" (i.e. that the "vacuum" is a "plenum"). The Casimir effect, predicted in the following year and subsequently verified, is another direct demonstration of the ZPF's reality.
Questions and Answers about the Origin of Inertia and the Zero-Point Field - From CalPhysics
Check this old story:
The earth is not perfectly round and its mass distribution varies due to tides, etc.
>> “For instance, the Pioneers are flying out of the solar system — they’re not bound to their central body, the sun. “
Of course, it needs to be included in the set of possibilities that the probes are not experiencing irregular change in relative velocity.
If you want on or off the Electric Universe Ping List, Freepmail me.
Wow, love hurts!
It’s Planet X.
Maybe this guy had something to do with it ..... 
A disturbance in the force?
[Induction: "The generation of an electromotive force in a closed circuit by a varying magnetic flux through the circuit."]
The Problem with Gravity: New Mission Would Probe Strange Puzzle
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 18 October 2004
Imagine the weight of a nagging suspicion that what held your world together, a constant and consistent presence you had come to understand and rely on, wasn't what it seemed. That's how scientists feel when they ponder gravity these days. For more than three centuries, the basics of gravity were pretty well understood. Newton described the force as depending on an object's mass. Though it extends infinitely, gravity weakens with distance (specifically, by the inverse square of the distance). Einstein built on these givens in developing his theory of relativity. Then more than a decade ago a researcher noticed something funny about two Pioneer spacecraft that were streaming toward the edge of the solar system. They weren't where they should have been.
Something was holding the probes back, according to calculations of their paths, speed and how the gravity of all the objects in the solar system -- and even a tiny push provided by sunlight -- ought to act on them.
Now scientists have proposed a new mission to figure out what's up with gravity.
Staggering possibilities
Pioneer 10 and 11 launched in 1972 and 1973. Today each is several billion miles away, heading in opposite directions out of the solar system.
The discrepancy caused by the anomaly amounts to about 248,500 miles (400,000 kilometers), or roughly the distance between Earth and the Moon. That's how much farther the probes should have traveled in their 34 years, if our understanding of gravity is correct. (The distance figure is an oversimplification of the actual measurements, but more on that in a moment.)
Scientists are quick to suggest the Pioneer anomaly, as they call it, is probably caused by the space probes themselves, perhaps emitting heat or gas. But the possibilities have been tested and modeled and penciled out, and so far they don't add up.
Which leaves open staggering possibilities that would force wholesale reprinting of all physics books:
Invisible dark matter is tugging at the probes
Other dimensions create small forces we don't understand
Gravity works differently than we think
lot's more at:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_041018.html
Shouldn’t make a difference what the weight is.
A hammer and a feather on the moon should fall at exactly the same rate.
In fact, I’ve looked closely at some of the vids of the moon landings and watched the dust fall.
The dust falls exactly as it should in an airless environment, thus debunking the “We never went to the moon” loonies.
I sincerely believe it is “anti-gravity”. Years ago I knew a geophysicist that was doing gravity research for the Air Force. Even missles from an airplane are corrected for regional gravity effects. Things never quite worked out, and there were suspicions of a small repulsive gravity force. Although that was years ago and haven’t heard anything else regarding it, so perhaps it was a wild goose chase.
Forbush decrease effect? Although typically thought of as an indication of future solar activity, the Sun’s Great Conveyor Belt has slowed to a record-low crawl that’s considered “off the bottom of the charts.” A slow belt means lower solar activity. Less plasma circulation = less solar flares and radiation storms = less magnetic force fields and increased radiation acting upon spacecraft. It would be interesting to see the solar activity at the time of all referenced flybys.
“While this is just one-millionth of that probe’s total velocity, the precision of the velocity measurements was 0.1 millimeters per second.....”
The good folks that test my software are like this bunch. All I can say is “Perfect is the enemy of good”.
Here's the full story on the amazing mine shaft experiments:
A hammer and a feather on the moon should fall at exactly the same rate.
Correct, but a higher mass object would have a greater inertia.
We don’t understand gravity, in a perfect manner. Hell, I’m sitting on a chair held up by spinning molecules and if the gravity field were any different by the slightest degree, I’d be flattened on the floor (or worse) or on the ceiling looking down....
Did Karl Rove make an upgrade to his weather machine?
Weight is the least of my worries.
We stamped our Earth address on Pioneer. What if an alien drops in and expects a free meal, a free room and a free education? Wait...we already have aliens that expect that.
Never mind...
Sounds like you're describing "dark energy". But I don't think it's suppose to have much of an effect on minor scales like the solar system. It's thought to kick in at cosmic expansion (big Bang) scales.
Looks like “Dark Matter” is more powerful than all our “Grey Matter”.
Seriously though, this sounds like a simple case of the so called "Transient G" effect. I'm sure they will figure it out within about six and a half years.
Aah! A fellow Monty Python fan! They'll always be near the top of my list. I think I'll throw in my Holy Grail tape tonight. Haven't watched it in about 2 or 3 years.
Check out this wacky physics site. They take the question very seriously!
Doppler effect... or alcohol.
No problem...
Just go and see the Global Warming folks a few doors down the university corridor.
They will be able to fix those pesky computer models for you...:^)
“Like most pitchers, Perry was not renowned for his hitting ability, and in his sophomore season of 1963, he is said to have joked, “They’ll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run.” Other variants on the story say that someone else said it about him, but either way, on July 20, 1969, just minutes after the Apollo 11 spacecraft carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, Perry hit the first home run of his career.”
>> Wikipedia
Was the pitch a spitball or a cutter? /laughs
NASA has had problems with units conversion before.
Nah.
Couldn't happen again.
LOL
Did they factor in the Monoliths in their equations?
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