Mysterious Force Holds Back NASA Probe In Deep Space

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 2-10-2002 | Robert Matthews

[going hot]

so the alien intelligence thought that the probe was named "V'ger"

I always wondered how a machine based society/intelligence that lived so far from earth could read enough english and annunciate the letters correctly to come up with "Vger" with the letters painted on the side of the spacecraft. I mean, how did they know that the scribbling was even a language, and not some form of competition stripes??

It was amazing that the visible letters were pronounced correctly in the first place. :-)

[AmerRepb]

Pioneer 10 is moving in the opposite direction to the Sun's motion through the galaxy, the solar apex direction. The motion of the heliospheric boundary through the local interstellar medium may cause a bow wave upstream of the heliopause and a tail downstream. The flow of subatomic particles making up the solar wind is expected to undergo a shock transition from supersonic to subsonic before reaching the heliopause. This shock is called the solar-wind termination shock. Here termination refers to the end of supersonic flow and not the end of the solar wind, which occurs at the heliopause. Prior to Pioneers 10 and 11, the effect of the solar wind was thought to extend to the vicinity of Jupiter or perhaps a bit farther. The Pioneer scientists now predict the distance from the Sun at which the terminal shock may be encountered is from 60 to 100 astronomical units (AU) or more, where an AU is defined as the distance of the Earth from the sun ~ 150 million kilometers (~93,000 million miles). For reference, the distance to the outermost planet is ~ 40 AU's.

My best guess is that the winds have changed from NW and are now Southerly winds at 15 (bunch of zeros) to 20 (many more zeros) mph creating the drag.

[blam]

Very interesting thanks.

[JohnBovenmyer]

Hmmm at 6 mph per century Pioneer should come to a dead stop in about 4500 centuries ( if that figure of 27000 mph is correct) and thus it will never reach another star.

So mankind is being quarantined.

[RadioAstronomer]

This has been discussed for a few years now. See:

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v81/i14/p2858_1

http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/1998/split/pnu391-1.htm

http://www.geocities.com/solarstormmonitor/Pioneer.html

[RadioAstronomer]

Except if you follow my links, you will notice that spacecraft traveling in opposite directions on opposite sides of the solar system are experiencing the same anomaly.

[Timesink]

Until 1988, Pioneer 10 was the most remote object made by man - a distinction now held by Voyager 1.

How did Voyager get farther out? Was it launched at a higher rate of speed, or did Pioneer 10 spend more time orbiting planets, or what?

[jlogajan]

Or perhaps radio waves don't travel at the speed of light forever. Maybe they slow down by 6 mph every 100 years.

That's known as the tired light theory. However, spectral emission and absorption lines from distant stars and nearby starts arrive on the same wavelenghts. If light slowed down with time, the arriving wavelengths would all be longer, and therefore all the spectral lines shifted for the more distant stars. There is no hint of that. Therefore light doesn't get tired or slow down with age.

[Flyer]

We are far from being "done" with physics.

Yep. We don't even know enough to be dangerous yet.

[samtheman]

I have also heard that our little neck of the interstellar woods is remarkable free of such stuff. Gives us great views into space and apparently we can thank two fairly recent and close super nova for the excellant visibility. Shock waves from the explosions apparently blew all the normal interstellar gas and dust out of our neighborhood.

The views might be great but the bad news is that the relative lack of interstellar gas in our region might be a future obstacle to bringing our Ramscoop Technology online.

[samtheman]

Excellent.

[Revelation 911]

Maybe these is something to that giant sucking sound Ross Perot was babbling on about...

Nope - that only lasts 8 years & coincides with the election cycle

[DB]

I like;

Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my cloths...

[leadpenny]

Any connection between the subject of this thread and the APOD for 10 Feb 02?

[PatrickHenry]

mystery force Space probe bump

Thanks for the ping. I am strangely attracted to this thread.

[Rebelbase]

Sorry, I grew up with phonix.

[Physicist]

Last May on FreeRepublic I put forth this hypothesis about the deceleration of the probes. I threw it around the physics department here, and everyone I talked to thought it was a likely answer. I wanted (and still want!) to write a paper with the full explanation, but first I need to get accurate position data for the probes, which I've so far been unable to obtain.

[Yeti]

Hmm, they didn't mention drag due to interstellar gas, did they? That would seem to be a candidate, would it not?

My thoughts exactly.

Funny that these guys would assume that our understanding of the laws of physics is way off before they consider the possibilty that we may have slightly mismeasured or miscalculated the density of matter in the region. Or the gravitational pull of the solar system en masse as the vehicles become more distant. Or the flux of matter moving into the solar system.

One ten-billionth the force of gravity is more likely rounding error in computations than anything else. Or how about accumulation of mass on the probes due to collisions with microparticles?

[Buffalo Head]

This is the sort of childish input to which I was noting. The chat rooms for such folks must be full so they post their drivel here.

Al Gore invented Pioneer...

Maybe these is something to that giant sucking sound Ross Perot was babbling on about...

"Very funny, Scotty. Now turn the tractor beam OFF."

It's either the 6% tax congress put on them for renouncing their citizenship or Hillary Care's impuded rent tax pulling them towards the National Treasury.

Maybe it's that Brown Dwarf Art Bells been talking about re Hillary.

An a** that massive

This is obviously due to cosmic warming.

I believe this effect can be blamed on Enron!

no, i believe that would have been gary coleman.

JESUS is coming and he aint happy.

Global warming?

Etceteras.

[4CJ]

Could it be that light particles (photons) are hitting the probes and slowing them down?

Well, duh (as the old joke goes), if that's the case - go at night.