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On 02 March 1973, the NASA probe Pioneer 10 was launched into space on the top of an Atlas/Centaur/TE364-4 launch vehicle that pushed it away from Earth at 32,193 mph en route to a date with Jupiter. The massive planet’s gravity helped accelerate the probe to 82,021 mph.
It was 05 April 1973 that Pioneer 11 was launched at the apex of a similar vehicle. It too took the quick road to Jupiter, but didn’t stay long before headed off to Saturn.
As both departed their mission they each were moving in a direction askew the solar ecliptic. The trajectories afforded the rocket scientists at NASA to do their stuff. With presumably reliable estimates of how many particulates the probes would encounter, the bean counters should have been able to predict the speed of each probe through at least the end of the solar system.
But it seems their numbers weren’t crunched quite right. Both the Pioneer craft are slowing. Or, more directly, the craft are not where they were expected to be because an unexplained acceleration back towards the sun. Scientists proffered multiple possible explanations:
Imaginary
- Observation error – Dust or other particulates between Earth and the probes causing a change in the Doppler Effect of the signals.
- Bad math – Someone forgot to carry when originally calculating the trajectories … or someone rounded wrong.
Mundane
- Gas leak – Both crafts are suited with a radioisotope thermoelectric generator which has a helium exhaust; if that exhaust were leaking it would cause some slowing, and they are identical so a design flaw in one would be reflected in both.
- Drag – from more dust than expected, solar wind, cosmic rays, or tiny UFOs slamming into it. A good possibility, since the craft are nearing the Kuiper Belt, and no one has really seen it.
- Radiation pressure – Maybe the built in radio shooting out all those signals is creating some thrust.
- Static cling – just like the way a skirt clings to a girl’s legs when she’s in a hurry, maybe the probes have built up an electric charge that is trying to stick it to the sun.
Scientist Nightmares
- Dark energy – interaction with a force we haven’t observed or proved yet. Great.
- New physics – something Einstein hadn’t gotten to yet. Maybe something waiting in the offing that we’ll see when we marry Quantum Mechanics to General Relativity.
- Einsteinian Foible – maybe he was just wrong.
Finally, in 2012, NASA scientists concluded that the anomaly is due to thermal recoil force. “The effect is something like when you are driving a car and the photons from your headlights are pushing you backward,” the paper’s lead author explains. “It is very subtle.”
© 2005 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).
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I just want to tell you that this site is awesome. It has provoked many additional hours reading wikipedia and other reference sites, based on the topics you present! Keep up the good work guys.
p.s.- here are some topics I would like to suggest: CIA MK-ULTRA experiments, The IBM “particle transporter” experiments, and some of the last round of stuff they looked into at the Palo Alto Research Center.
crazyray said: “CIA MK-ULTRA experiments”
See: Operation Midnight Climax
The article on the Kuiper belt dust theory seems to have all the bases covered. Occam’s Razor almost demands that this is the case.
Marius said: “The article on the Kuiper belt dust theory seems to have all the bases covered. Occam’s Razor almost demands that this is the case.”
OK – I will try to read that article. I know this site has really great writers because I can actually figure out what they are talking about.
However, I am voting for the Dark Engergy!! Only because scientists have had their lovely calculations blown apart time and again and they seem to think there is less gravity out there than Dark Energy/Matter. Fun!!
Occam’s Razor. You know I never heard of that term until watching an episode of House, MD?
JustAnotherName said: “Occam’s Razor. You know I never heard of that term until watching an episode of House, MD?”
Haha, I dont think thats too good man. You have to keep track of bedrock principles such as that.
thatsmyname said: “JustAnotherName said: “Occam’s Razor. You know I never heard of that term until watching an episode of House, MD?”
Haha, I dont think thats too good man. You have to keep track of bedrock principles such as that.”
It was on the Flintstones?…..I know. Now I am just wasting your time.
Sorry to post a negative comment, but I’m afraid that I have to say that the quality of writing in this entry just isn’t up to the standard of the rest of the site. There are a lot of grammatical problems and awkward choices of phrasing.
Also, I have to assume that the author has never met a real physicist, or else things like labelling hints of new physics as “scientist nightmares” and “The possibility that physics as we know it might be wrong shocks the people of that field” would never have found their way into the article.
Speaking as a professional physicist, I would recommended changing the phrase “scientist nightmares” to “Things that would make scientists really excited if they could be verified,” and replacing the word “shocks” with “excites” or “intrigues.” That would be much closer to the truth.
I can assure you that nothing packs an auditorium full of physicists like a plausible claim that something really new, fundamental, and unexpected has been verified to exist. I don’t really understand the public impression that physicists are extremely stodgy, conservative, and unwilling to accept new, bizarre ideas. People become physicists because they LIKE bizarre ideas, especially the ones that actually have some evidence backing them up!
As a non-physicist, I enjoyed the article immensely. Popular news has never – to my knowledge – reported on the ‘after life’ of the Pioneer missions. In my mental photograph of the problem they’re having with losing velocity, I get a picture of the solar system clawing back a child escaping its grasp. Like the massed gravity of the planets is acting as a humongous magnet.
elifint, I agree. Those scientific professionals I have met are anything but stodgy. One in particular took to new ideas like a newly released prisoner at a strip club.
Thanks DI for another great article.
seems to me the quantum mechanics and general relativity theories leave a little to much to the imagination, while they are the best we have there must be more to them.
Dark energy – interaction with a force we haven’t observed or proved yet. Great.
New physics – something Einstein hadn’t gotten to yet. Maybe something waiting in the offing that we’ll see when we marry Quantum Mechanics to General Relativity.
I disagree that these are physicists’ nightmares – I’m pretty sure there are a lot of physicists who would be absolutely delighted with some new, contradictary evidence to dig their teeth into (not to mention the vast number of PhD students with a sudden glut of work to do).
This is my first post here btw, and this site is something I’ve been looking for for a while – fascinating and with a lot of intelligent contributors.
there is no “public impression”s about physicists becuase nobody spends their time thinking about physicists. The article is about an interesting error in the realm of space exploration and the possible implications it holds. Not about how physicists are “stodgy, conservative, and unwilling to accept new, bizarre ideas”. Get over yourself. I assure u my impression about physicists hasent changed after reading this interesting article because i still dont care about what physicists are like.
here’s another possibility: Programming inaccuracy. Most people don’t realize that minor errors occur between base ten and binary(base two and the most basic computer language). Simply put, in base ten two fifths is represented as .4, but in base two it is an irrational number so it becomes rounded. This creates a small inaccuracy that could result in the small difference produced between calculations and reality. I’m no expert, but this seems to be the most valid to me as there has been no mention of it and is almost impossible to work around if it is possible.
Before now, I had never heard of this phenomenon – thanks for the information!