Posted on 02/09/2002 6:34:49 PM PST by blam
Journal reference: Nature (vol 415, p 297)
Also Casimir effect (quantum zero point fluctuations)--
small scale: (meter) Eotvos Experment (reported meter-scale secondary (repulsive anomaly) effects dependent on material (M vs Z; spin characteristics?); 100 years of repeated experiment - inconclusive; (larger scale experiments: now using corner-cube reflectors of Apollo on the moon)
solar system scale: (10 A.U.) (attractive anomaly) Pioneer anomaly (this thread)
cosmic scale: (20 billion light year)(repulsive); cosmological constant
Thats what I'm thinking as well.
second guess, totally different. correct conclusions, reason for slow down is from the presence of onboard radio transmitters, the propogation itself, they are somehow tied in with gravity.
/layman's guesses
"Kepten, there's a Hand on the ship!!
These things keep us humble.
There is a little bit that we understand and a lot that we don't.
I sincerely doubt that any physicist or astronomer knows the exact value of the gravitational constant out to 10 decimal places.
They also don't know the exact mass of the spacecraft - there may be residual fuel onboard that wasn't used but isn't accounted for in the mass calculation.
Maybe there is something subtle we don't know yet about light, gravity, and space. This is exciting news, we may be on the brink of a new understanding of where we live.
This data will have to be watched for a long while! Perhaps a deep space interferometry experiment or long paseline ring laser gyro would shed some (delayed) light on the "matter".
I'm not referring to deceleration. In referring to a slight acceleration in the direction of motion away from Earth and the solar system. I remember reading about this a few years ago. Maybe as little as two years ago. The people monitoring the Voyagers and the Pioneers said the space craft were speeding away from the the Sun at a faster rate than predicted. And these scientists had no explanation for the phenomenon. Some proposed explanations included:
i) The pressure of sunlight on the vehicles.
ii) Possibly some sort of gas leaking from the space craft slighly accelerating them.
iii) The expansion of space -- thus effecting the measured speed of the space craft.
iv) Measurement errors.
v) Something effecting the radio signals from the space craft.
Now they say the vehicles are inexplicably slowing down. Albeit, very slightly.
Well, if it is Hillary's fatass, and if they are aliens, then they will be overjoyed at finally finding their fat-assed goddess.
It's clear and simple, and can be understood by the people.
Its possible that the spacecrafts trajectory continues to remain constant, but the radio signals are being affected.
As the spacecraft approach the Oort cloud, the transmissions might be getting interference from an electrical discharge.
Just speculation.
"Based on 50 years of accumulated observations of the motions of galaxies and the expansion of the universe, most astronomers believe that as much as 90 percent of the stuff constituting the universe may be objects or particles that cannot be seen. In other words, most of the universe's matter does not radiate--it provides no glow that we can detect in the electromagnetic spectrum.
"First posited some 60 years ago by astronomer Fritz Zwicky, this so-called missing matter was believed to reside within clusters of galaxies. Nowadays we prefer to call the missing mass 'dark matter,' for it is the light, not the matter, that is missing."
Perhaps the answer to that mysterious force lies HERE.
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