Slashdot Mirror
Mysterious Force Affects Pioneer 10 & 11 Probes
JabbaTheFart writes "The Guardian is writing that something strange is tugging at America's oldest spacecraft. As the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes head towards distant stars, scientists have discovered that the craft - launched more than 30 years ago - appear to be in the grip of a mysterious force that is holding them back as they sweep out of the solar system.
Some researchers say unseen 'dark matter' may permeate the universe and that this is affecting the Pioneers' passage. Others say flaws in our understanding of the laws of gravity best explain the crafts' wayward behaviour."
The question is can we develop the technology to detect tractor beams all the way out there from here?
What's interesting about this is the craft went in different directions out of the solar system, which rules out something like the mass of an unknown body in the outer solar system affecting their flight.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
exactly what was AFFECTED?
They could just be hitting up against that big crystal shell that all the stars are painted on.
Smeghead every day of the week.
When you think about it, we know so little about deep space. Perhaps the Matrix doesn't go out that far? Clipping problems?
It is also thought that dark matter is at the centre of galaxies Could explain a lot of things, e.g. the expansion/contraction of the universe. Judging by the amount of "tangible" matter in the universe, there is no way to halt the expansion, and it will go on forever. However, if there is dark matter, it could hold enough gravity to halt expansion and force the big crunch. Lots of info on this sort of stuff here
It is neat to see things like this which challenge our understanding of relatively basic things like gravity. Part of me is still hopeful that we will find some holes in the relativity theory. More than a few scientists have pointed out other inconsistencies between observations and relativity. It would be nice not to be constrained by this whole 186,000 miles per second thing :)
It'd just be great if after all this time we actually find out something like it's not possible to leave the solar system without some sort of extreme propulsion system.
They're so far away the Matrix is accumulating significant floating point error.
Gremlins.
Obviously, this is merely the result of the space craft leaving the singularity of our solar system, thereby moving outside of Einsteinian laws of gravitation and physics. It can now enter hyperspace... or would be able to if the puppeteers would hurry up and arrange for a hyperdrive shunt to get dropped off.
Sorry, just finished "Ringworld".
Ah yes, the good old "If you don't know, blame it on Dark Matter" strikes again.
-Kenneth Sundby-
Note to Hemos: The verb is spelled "affect". You know, with an "a". The noun is spelled "effect", but it's the verb needed in the title.
Sorry, don't mean to sound curmudgeonly and grumpy and so forth, but so few people get this right that I can't stand by and let it slide.
I'll put the cantankerous old grouch away now...
Daar is nie 'n lepel nie
No, this was explained more than a year ago. Radiation pressure from the spacecraft (I think from an RTG) is causing a very small asymetrical thrust.
Nothing new here
http://michaelsmith.id.au
What's the matter with people these days? It's a tractor beam, of course!
Even I know that, and I'm not even interested in science.
--
Only the dead have seen the end of war...
It's just the cloaked death star. That explains the force.
From TFA They had been tracking the probes using the giant dishes of Nasa's Deep Space Network.
This doesn't quite quench my thirst for information: does this mean the probes are still sending radio waves/signals, or just irradiating passively?
Sigged!
I don't know about you guys, but if "something strange" were tugging at my "probe" using "mysterious forces," It would probably be bigger news than the science page of /. !
im not scientist, and surely these articles are written for the layman, but all of the articles i've read say "something more than the sun's gravity is pulling at the probes"
wouldn't the planets, especially jupiter, and saturn, and ALL of the misc tiny asteroids in the various belts, exert a pull on the probes as well? some sort of combined solar system gravitational force since the probes are well beyond the last planet?
doesn't seem that complicated to me, but im definately coming at it from a relatively uneducated perspective then who's saying something's wrong in the first place.
One thing that is rare for them to admit is not knowing why something happens.
According to my physikcs teacher, this is quite often the case. Physics describe how things happen, the question why they happen is left to the philosophers.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
Hmm, I think you need to listen to scientists more. They (we?) can often come up with crazy theories but a good scientist will explain what their fairly sure about and what is just guess work. The huge number of different theories about dark energy at the moment shows we don't really have much idea.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
We are too combative as a species to co-exist with the rest of the universe.
Bit of an old story this.
wot no sig
How is this news ?
It is at least 2 years old. Come on, when a new explanation will arise, then there will be news.
But I believed it used to be an unexplained acceleration, not decceleration which was detected...
actually no, black hole(s) are at the center of every single galaxy.
This isn't news. The slowing-down effect has been seen before, on some other probe. I even remember
But expecting /. editors to recall that would be like expecting them to get effect and affect correct.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
if you throw items of holodeck equipment within the the holodeck it will hit the holodeck wall.
Only if by "rare" you mean "all the time."
The Bush Administration is altering the laws of gravity in order to distract us from the situation in Iraq. A bill in Congress right now will nullify the law of gravity as we know it, taking away the rights of individuals to remain firmly planted on the Earth.
what can I say... the damn things snagged my sweater during take-off, and I didn't want to say anything...
Link to the Physics Web article: http://physicsweb.org/article/world/17/9/3
According to this paper, it could be drag from dust in the outer solar system.
point out how illiterate the "Editors" are. If they worked anywhere in the real media they would have been sacked by now.
Um, I'm way out of my area of expertice here, so forgive me if this is utter drivel.
The probes are basically big lumps of metal moving at high speed through space.
How much do we know about the magnetic fields in deep space?
Could this be some fairly boring electromagnetic effect?
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Uranus!
Someone above here must have a problem with english syntax...
Dont be such a dipshit. All scientist are aware we dont know that much of the overall picture. You learn that in highschool.
...to the inevitable discovery of a monolith and a solar baby.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
It's a SPACE STATION!!!
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
I thought dark energy was pretty much agreed upon as being the cashmier effect, only amplified in the almost total empty space between the galaxies.
now common, get those ZPMs going, or if you are from canada...ZedPMs
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
they state things they are fairly sure about as being the way it is. many times it's from the limited understanding we have and they have trouble with that.
Evolution or ID?
Mysterious force AFFECTS Pioneer 10 & 11 Probes.
I hate sigs.
- To, Too, Two
- Were, Where, and We're
- Buy, By, and Bye
- There, Their, and They're
Others?Looks like somebody's just discovered the terrible secret of space!
Software piracy is victimless theft.
I have no idea whether the effect would be so big though.
Some (Majorana?) even thought some kinds of matter were radiating "pushing gravity", but I'm really leaning dangerously far out of the window by guessing that this is the way that a black hole a the center of the galaxy causes the anomaly in galactic rotation curve that is observed (that anomaly suggests more (gravitational) pull, too.)
Please note that the arguments derived from thinking about Pushing gravity might apply even if gravity is not considered pushing by the physics used.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Sorry, couldn't help that take on the old joke...
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Use the force Luke...
We're about to discover the Real World, and the only thing we don't know if it's run by mice or if it's a giant TV show we're in :)
my other sig is a 500 page novel
After reading the article I had a flashback about old computer games, where "mysterious force" would tug you back when you reached the end of the area.
:)
How funny it would be if our world ended after Pluto and the stars would only be 'a painted backcloth'. I wonder what kinda effect it would have on our society. Scientist would propably spend years trying to explaing the phenomena, until one day a human could travel to the edge and verify the obvious.
Or maybe the aliens that run our world on their supercomputer have not yet coded the rest of the universe. Let's wait for few more years and see if 'the mysterious force' has been removed
One thing that is rare for them to admit is not knowing why something happens.
Rare? It's what they do all the time! It's the very first step in every single research project, and most of the subsequent steps too.
Some religious preachers and journalists and Hollywood writers portray scientists as believing that they know everything. But for real scientists, wondering what happens is the very basis of their work.
You should read more Scientific American and less clueless tabloids.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Well, our understanding of the laws of gravitation _is_ better than the link in the article might suggest. Look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity.
Greetings from the physics department.
Has this effect been observed as to the Voyagers?
Excellent illustration (updated daily!) of all these probes and their vitals (trajectories, distance, speed, etc.) at Heavens-Above .
Bush Lies On the Record.
On the contrary, real scientists quite frequently admit when they don't understand something. Perhaps you were thinking of politicians?
I can't find any referrence to the actual amount of the effect that is affecting the space craft. How far are they off?
Setting your speed at "c" and it takes a while to get out of the Solar System. Set it at a few AUs per second and you can clear the solar system more quickly, but once you are out, it seems like you are not moving at all. Once you accelerate to a light year per second, things start moving a bit, especially the neighboring stars, but it is still pretty slow going on a galactic scale. If you want to get out beyond the galaxy, I recommend going perpendicular to the galactic plane and accelerating to a few thousand light years per second (ummm...that is rather fast, don't you think).
Doing this gives you a pretty good perspective on things. Once you are in inter-galactic space, if you aren't moving about a thousand light years per second, it seems like you aren't moving at all. For an even better perspective of mixing size and speed, try manually flying back to Sol. It seems easy, and you even decelerate a bit, but it seems like you are going kind of slow until you suddenly zip past Sol doing about 100 light years per second. Go back and try again.
Back to the original point, yeah the speed of light is fast, but on a galactic and/or universal scale, it isn't that fast. I too hope they either find some loopholes in relativity, or find some loopholes in the universe (such as Asimov's idea of Hyperspace), or we won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
Yeah, I know this is deeply in the realm of Science Fiction, but I'm kind of hoping that it becomes Science Fact someday...
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Mission control: Ok, who forgot to cut the string? (Joe at the guidance control console slowly slips under his desk)
It's not. It's unpossible.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
It's bumped up against the edge of the Starflight map.
12:50 - press return.
As it happens, The Economist recently ran an article addressing some of these issues. The article also provides context and perspective that should be of interest to those participating in this discussion. For convenience, the full text is reproduced below; it is also accessible online (may require paid subscription).
----
Gravitational anomalies
An invisible hand?
Aug 19th 2004
From The Economist print edition
[Image]
An unexplained effect during solar eclipses casts doubt on General Relativity
"ASSUME nothing" is a good motto in science. Even the humble pendulum may spring a surprise on you. In 1954 Maurice Allais, a French economist who would go on to win, in 1988, the Nobel prize in his subject, decided to observe and record the movements of a pendulum over a period of 30 days. Coincidentally, one of his observations took place during a solar eclipse. When the moon passed in front of the sun, the pendulum unexpectedly started moving a bit faster than it should have done.
Since that first observation, the "Allais effect", as it is now called, has confounded physicists. If the effect is real, it could indicate a hitherto unperceived flaw in General Relativity--the current explanation of how gravity works.
That would be a bombshell--and an ironic one, since it was observations taken during a solar eclipse (of the way that light is bent when it passes close to the sun) which established General Relativity in the first place. So attempts to duplicate Dr Allais's observation are important. However, they have had mixed success, leading sceptics to question whether there was anything to be explained. Now Chris Duif, a researcher at the Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, has reviewed the evidence. According to a paper he has just posted on arXiv.org, an online publication archive, the effect is real, unexplained, and could be linked to another anomaly involving a pair of American spacecraft.
Three different types of instrument have been used to detect the Allais effect. The first are conventional pendulums, such as the one Dr Allais used originally. The second are torsion pendulums, which work by hanging a bar that has weights at each end from a wire. As the wire twists back and forth, the bar rotates in pendulum-like motion. The third are gravimeters, which are, in essence, very precise scales. All of these instruments measure the acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface, a quantity known as g. The Allais effect is a small additional acceleration, so tiny that it would take an apple about a day to fall from a tree branch if it were the only gravitational effect around.
Allez, Allais
Dr Duif has examined various conventional explanations for the Allais effect. He finds the most obvious suggestion--that it is a mere measuring error--unlikely, because similar results have been found by many different groups, operating independently and, in at least one case, without knowledge of Dr Allais's results.
He also discounts several explanations that rely on conventional physical changes that might take place during an eclipse. One of these is that the anomaly is caused by the seismic disturbance induced as crowds of sightseers move into and out of a place where an eclipse is visible. That seems unlikely, given that one of the experiments with a positive result was conducted in a remote area of China while another that had a negative result took place in Belgium, one of the most crowded parts of the planet. Dr Duif also considered the possibility that, because the moon's shadow cools the air during an eclipse, this cooler, and thus denser, air might exert a different gravitational pull on the instruments. This change could, he reckon
Guess what? Science is _based_ on not knowing everything.
Scientists not admitting they don't know everything? Well, gee, I thought they even told you exactly what they don't know yet and/or are trying to find out, each time a new experiment is performed. Whenever a new particle accelerator is built, whenever a new probe is sent into space, whenever someone builds a bigger telescope, whenever they bury some sophisticated particle detector deep, they'll conveniently tell you exactly which part of the unknown they're trying to probe.
If anyone believed we already have the absolute truth already, we wouldn't need those. In fact, we could just as well shut down the existing ones and send everyone home. Nothing left to discover, no?
But that's not the case.
The whole idea of science is that we don't know everything. If you want absolute truths, those are that-a-way, through the door marked "religion". Science is in the other direction.
In science at most we might have a good enough approximation for stuff we're able to measure already. And for a given class of problems.
E.g., Newton's mechanics are accurate enough for everyday stuff: things weighing between milligrams and thousands of tonnes, at relatively slow speeds. If you move away from that in any way, the approximation is no longer enough, and more detailed theories become necessary. That's why we have relativism, quantum mechanics, astrophysics, and so on.
We do _not_ however have an explanation for stuff noone has measured before, or for problems which didn't even exist before.
E.g., for what happens at sub-atomic particles under a certain size. That's why we keep building bigger accelerators. 'Cause we have no clue what happens there, why or how. We're trying to find out, 'cause so far noone measured anything in that range.
E.g., for exactly the problem in this article. Noone before had measured what happens when you chuck a rock (or a spacecraft) far enough outside the solar system. It's a new problem, and, yes, the scientists are very open about it: noone has a clue what's happening there or why.
But that's ok. That's how science work.
What will happen is that we devise new experiments, measure some more, and then we'll have enough data to make a better theory. One which will allow us to chuck spacecrafts better.
See, for all its "absolute truths" and the knee-jerk jumping to point fingers at scientists, that's one thing that religion can't do: eventually tell you _how_ to do something right.
Everything you see about you, such as the electronics in the computer you typed that on, didn't happen because someone shrugged and said "uh... guess because God wanted it to be so". It came to be possible because some scientists openly admitted what they don't know yet, and proceeded to measure and devise theories.
(And someone will point out that engineers were also needed to make an actual device based on those theories. Indeed. Personally I just think of engineers as a branch of science. The applied kind of science, as opposed to the theoretical kind. Still science either way.)
Theories which don't just explain why something already happened, but how to make it happen again. And how to control it when you make it happen. How to make it happen slightly differently.
But again, it invariably started with someone saying "well, we have no bloody clue why _that_ happens. We'll need to measure some more and do some serious thinking."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As it happens, The Economist ran an article in 1997 addressing some of these issues. The article also provides context and perspective that should be of interest to those participating in this discussion. For convenience, the full text is reproduced below; it is also accessible online (may require paid subscription).
----
A space oddity
Sep 24th 1998
From The Economist print edition
A tiny error in the paths of two spacecraft may require the rewriting of some of the laws of physics
OUT in the far reaches of the solar system, beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, something strange is going on. Two space probes, now speeding away into the interstellar void, are not behaving as they should. They appear to be experiencing an unexplained extra tug from the sun--raising the possibility that there is something amiss with the laws of gravity.
Physicists are used to predicting spacecraft trajectories with great accuracy. For the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 probes, launched towards Jupiter in 1972 and 1973 and now heading away from the sun in opposite directions, they have done it with the help of a piece of computer software called the Orbit Determination Program (ODP). This calculates how the gravitational influence of the sun and the planets--suitably tweaked to fit with the general theory of relativity--affects each probe's motion.
At the same time, by analysing radio signals from the two probes, precise measurements of the Pioneers' actual trajectories can be made. As each craft zooms away from the solar system, the radio waves it transmits back to earth are slightly stretched out, causing a change in frequency (known as a Doppler shift) that depends on the craft's speed relative to the earth. With enough number-crunching--taking into account the motion of the earth around the sun and its wobbles as it spins on its axis--the position and acceleration of each Pioneer can then be worked out.
The trouble is that the predicted and measured trajectories do not match. Instead, there seems to be an additional pull (in effect, an acceleration) in the direction of the sun that is not predicted by the ODP. The anomaly is almost imperceptible: about one ten-billionth of the acceleration due to gravity at the earth's surface (at that rate, an apple would take a day to drop to the ground from the branch of a tree). But that is still big enough to raise questions.
Send for the detectives
Astronomical discoveries often hinge on the analysis of wobbles, discrepancies and errors. The existence of Neptune was deduced from minute deviations between the predicted and observed orbits of Uranus. An anomaly in the orbit of Mercury provided one of the first clues that the laws of gravity as described by Newton were incomplete, which, in turn, led Einstein to general relativity. So John Anderson, one of the members of the Pioneer 10 navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says he feels a professional responsibility to make his sums add up. His latest attempts to explain the anomalous acceleration will be published next month in Physical Review Letters.
Dr Anderson and his team start by considering all the possible forces that might be acting on the Pioneer craft but have not been included in the ODP. Could any of them account for the slight acceleration towards the sun? Gas leaks, and the minuscule push provided by infra-red radiation from the crafts' electricity generators, were ruled out. Both would be too feeble, and would be unlikely to press in the sun's direction anyway. Similarly, the pressure exerted by sunlight, and the force exerted by the emissions from each probe's radio antenna, were dismissed: again, both are too weak, and they would tend to push the probes away from the sun, not towards it.
Next, the gravitational influence of objects
Hmm, I've read about this on Slashdot before, and I'm pretty sure I've read about Modified Newtonian Dynamics before.
The gist is this: MOND is an alternative to the "dark matter" explanation. It makes a modification to newton's laws of motion, whereby gravitational strength.
The equation F = ma is well known, but with MOND the gravitational inverse square law changes to an inverse linear law when the acceleration due to gravity falls below a critical value, which is very small (i.e. you get pretty far away from the source of gravity).
This explains most of the observed behavior that is currently explained by dark matter, including the rotation of galaxies which seem to defy newton's laws. Unfortunately, there's still no derived theoretical basis for MOND; as of now it's a rather arbitrary explanation with equations that just seem to work pretty well, and many physicists do not take MOND seriously. Then again, "dark matter" seems just as silly.
A more in-depth explanation is available here.
Interestingly, the MOND critical value for the acceleration (a0) turns out to be the speed of light divided by the age of the universe.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
MOND
/.
Well, it's what some physicists may be thinking, anyway. I suspect that the Guardian article is meaning to hint at this, as well. For those who don't know, MOND is a modification of standard Newtonian Dynamics that has to do with very small accelerations. I'd actually really, really like to see a MONDian calcuation of what the forces should be on those probes and see if it matches their current paths.
Wow. I think this is the second time I've advocated MOND (a theory which I just barely consider reasonable, and no where near verified) on
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
have in the past given clues to as yet undiscovered physics. Under Newtonian physics, it was thought that there would be another planet inside Mercury because of anomolies in Mercuries observable orbit. The theoretical inner planet was called Vulcan. It has since been shown that Mercuries motion can be more accurately described with Einstein's special relativity.
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird -- Proverbs 1:17
If we live in a "closed" universe that eventually loops back on itself, wouldn't the the inverse square law be more and more inaccurate as distance increases? It would seem to me that in a 4d sperical universe, a graph of gravity vs distance would be just slightly above the expected inverse square, with the error immeasurable at any local distance, but increasing at cosmic scales. Could this be the true explanation for the effects blamed on 'dark matter'? I'm gonna see if I can find the numbers on how far 'off' the probes are and try to do the math.
It makes a modification to newton's laws of motion, whereby gravitational strength.
I can't even remember what I was trying to say with that sentence.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
This is new? Everyone knows it takes forever to zone around here. Noobs.
No. Dark Energy is pretty much a mystery at the moment, there is no generally accepted explanation.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
Perhaps this is what really happened? Welcome to the real world Truman Burbank...
The key issue here is that the verb "to effect" is meaningful and useful, and we are rapidly losing it through ignorant misuse. One can advocate a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to language, but that isn't the same as defending actual errors in widely-understood words. Saying "effect" when you mean "affect" isn't like saying "ain't" when you mean "isn't", it's like saying "Austria" when you mean "Australia".
The article talked about ideas for potential successor craft. All I have to say is I hope that they are a LOT faster!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I like the following explanation of the anomalous acceleration. No dark matter/20 dimensions/new gravity theory needed here. A small amount of dust in the kuiper-belt that transfers momentum with the probe should be enough to explain the slowdown. Look at: http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/Anomalous/Accelerat ion.html
isn't it? or maybe we're fucking with the whales too much, again.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
The law of gravitation was published by David Hilbert in 1915 before Einstein. The article "Die Grundlagen der Physik (Erste Mitteilung)" by Hilbert is here.
-- Qu'est-ce que la propriété intellectuelle? It is thought control.
True that. Admitting uncertainty is the first step of science..."we don't know for sure why this is, so we'll propose a hypothesis, test it, and if the results don't clarify anything, we'll propose another one."
I don't know why people are shocked, or take it as a sign of supernatural causes every time a scientist "isn't sure." They're never sure. If they were sure, they wouldn't be scientists. Science takes a certain amount of confidence in a possibility, but being "sure" is the first step towards fudging data that's inexplicable. The universe is infinitely large and thus infinitely complex, and we'd only been empirically studying it for a few thousand years. Most of our in-depth insights have taken place in the past 200 years, and many clarifications and exceptions have taken place in the past 50, and even the past 20.
Scientists have a notoriously matter-of-fact attitude that leads some people to believe that science believes itself to be infallible. It doesn't. But due to the need for strict controls, even on language, to avoid confusion between scientists, even false and preposterous assumptions need to be stated matter-of-factly. Scientists don't claim to have all the answers...they just claim to have some very realistic (and repeatable) ones.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I'm not a rocket scientist, but I wonder if this is one of the effects of passing through the heliopause. It sounds like Pioneer 10 and 11 are too weak to send any actual data these days, so they can't really report if they're coming in contact with the expected particles, for instance.
Then again, it appears that this effect has been noted since at least 1998, so it's hard to say what's really going on. I will note that the two spacecraft are spin-stabilized, so maybe there's some weird frame-dragging-esque effect going on. I guess the effect hasn't been as noticeable on three-axis stabilized craft, though that's kind of expected since they would more frequently be using thrusters to change orientation (which would probably slightly affect trajectory too).
Maybe it's the natural expansion of the universe
Let's see...in the past few weeks we've...
Sounds to me like it's time to sell your Reynolds Wrap (aluminum foil) stock soon, 'cause our alien overlords are f---ing around with us now that we've found their planet. Pretty soon, you won't need tinfoil hats to protect you from their mind control beams. You see, they won't waste time on tinfoil hat types -- because they make the best treats for their pet Glargian devourers.
Those who sell their stock, while soon to be enslaved to the Zarlanian Horde, will at least know they had money to live it up before the invasion began in earnest.
IronChefMorimotoyou know, I was feeling really uneasy scrolling down a page with 200+ posts and not seeing one with overlords. Thank you for restoring my confidence in how the world works.
BTW, I would say: "..our probe-pulling overlords".
They've decided that we're not ready to be allowed out into the galaxy yet.
And not enough traffic for them to build http://www.cloggie.org/books/mallworld.html Mallworld yet.
What are you smoking? You make it sound like the explanation is on page 95 of the bible.. "And lo, the angel gabriel spake unto the herdsmen, and said: Take thee every herb bearing fruit... and the mysterious force effecting Pioneer 10 & 11 is from God doing his Silver Surfer impression."
Who modded this troll insightful? For shame. Parent post has zero redeeming value.
If science thought it knew everything, scientists wouldn't do experiments.
Galileo? Darwin? Helloooo? Earth to creationists... Stop picking fights with us. Science is not religion. If you think the world isn't big enough for both, go read St Thomas Aquinas (cliff notes: he philosphised that REASON and FAITH were BOTH part of the human mind and that each had it's sphere of relevance, eg, faith won't stop a bullet, but reason can help you design a flak jacket).
For the religious apologists, I held back the flamage, so beat it. And in case parent REALLY thinks this is beyond the ken of science, dude, the friggin' story has two educated guesses as to why it happens. Seriously, do you think you're making converts by posting that ignorant crap?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
You dont need to break lightspeed. You could cheat.
See this page for:
Worm Holes
Alcubierre's "Warp Drive"
Negative mass propulsion
Millis's hypothetical "Space Drives"
WarpDrives
I also have trouble harmonizing the two different statements you made about "religions":
The faithful make up stories to explain things ("And we are not willing to make up stories to explain the unexplainable").
The faithful don't attempt to explain things ("We don't admit defeat and say "oh well, must be gods way").
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
No, actually scientists state what they know, usually accompanied by how they know it, and how anyone can test the theory. That's what makes them scientists. Don't confuse a journalist spewing dumbed-down reports with a scientist.
>>>many times it's from the limited understanding we have and they have trouble with that.
If by "have trouble with that" you mean, "scientists like to learn and discover", you sure have a crooked way of saying it. If you mean "every time a scientist finds an unknown, they get all pissed off and make up lies to tell everyone, because they are heathen scum", then grow up. Science is here to stay.
Science as a school never said that reason precluded faith. It's the religious types who keep that torch lit, and cry when it burns them. Grow up.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
An article at physicsweb.org says:
When the craft were at distances of between 20 and 70 astronomical units, researchers found that the Doppler frequency of microwave signals that were bounced off the craft drifted at a small, constant rate
...they'd like their hyperspatial bypass back.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
The casimir effect cannot exist, as I understand it, on large scales like that. Its a force that results from the interesting effects of bringing two conductive surfaces so close to one another that only certain wavelengths of virtual parties can exist between the plates, whereas all wavelengths exist on the other sides of the plates. As a result, there is vacuum pressure pushing the plates together.
Its worth mentioning that yes, this could be used to extract energy from the vacuum, although no one has figured out (a) how to do this on a large enough scale to be useful and (b) whether it would take more energy to position the plates than you could extract (see below).
Logically, the energy to seperate the plates from one another should equal the energy gained by their collapse together due to vacuum pressure, so that should mean this is no net-gain.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Cattle Bruisers are going to fire their Camato Yannons!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
:P
Abbot: Your holiness, our physics research team has discovered the reason for the heretofore unknown force on the Pioneer probes.
Pope: I KNEW we'd get to the bottom of that!
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
..'to serve man'
http://members.cox.net/kaiotea/serveman.htm
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Obviously.
-- Cheers!
I think it is all the bad music and talk shows being broadcast for the past 10-15 years. That would hold anyone back.
Q: Why are pioneer 10 & 11 moving off course?
A: Because dark matter sucks.
A2: Because intersteller space sucks.
A3: Because SCO sucks less, the farther away you get from it.
I'm going to be here all week people, and the 10:00am show is completely different once I get my coffee.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Who's on first?
No Who's on second, he's the guy whose shirt is untucked. What's on first.
I tried calling it a DE-9 in a manual once, and all it did was generate support calls from customers who wanted to know if they could use a DB-9 instead. That battle has been lost. Also, if you recall, those connectors were called "subminiature D connectors" to distinguish them from the larger round bulkhead connectors. They don't look sub-miniature compared to the tiny stuff now. Interesting that a connector developed before Pioneer was launched, for power and audio signals is still in use for fibre channel.
[did you notice that clever Pioneer ref. so I don't get modded OT?]
Watch "The thirteenth Floor" and be afraid, very afraid.
my 2 cents
Well, great Arthur C. Clarke told us they will come.
:P
We just didn't know they were interested in our space junk
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Ohh no RIAA is exerting it's galactic influence!
They don't want the aliens to have a copy of the Rolling Stones they didn't pay for. So they are turning pioneer around.
Couldn't it be continuously hitting against clouds of dust?
Scientist's and Athiest's are the only ones will to admit that thay can't ALWAYS explain EVERYTHING.
Atheists have just as much faith as theists... maybe you mean agnostics?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
that's the first thing i thought of - yet it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the article..
English is a proper noun and adjective. "English syntax" would be the appropriate capitalization. Regardless, where's the guy with the sig line to the effect of "I'll pay for a subscription to Slashdot as soon as it goes one day without a duplicate story or spelling/grammatical error on the front page."?
It's the Void Ghosts, as fortold (in the end of the very long story which starts) by Sluggy Freelance!
YMMV
Urectum?
The universe is infinitely large?
When did that happen?
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
How close are these probes relative to the Oort cloud? I would think that what we are witnessing is that the probes lack the velocity to escape and will eventually become part of the Oort cloud.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
No, he means athiests. A lack of belief is not a belief.
> Atheists have just as much faith as theists
Well, that's patently false. Maybe you are speaking some language with different semantics, but around these parts, speaking of a lack of a belief usually indicates just that - a lack thereof. Or maybe you just lack a fundamental understanding of basic understanding of the difference between the fairly well-established concepts of something and nothing?
The simple explanation is that a slashdot editor typed a 3 in the years field instead of days field in the crontab file for the story-auto-dupe script.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
C'mon, editors; it's basic English. Many on this site like to bag on Microsoft for poor coding; that is little different from misue of the English language, although it can have more severe effects.
Bother, said Pooh, as he called in an air strike.
So, we have to raise the Yamato, outfit her with a Wave Motion Gun, and go out there and whup that ass!
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Belief of non-existence is not a lack of belief
Yep, Space Barnacles.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
"Space, it seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you."
Increase the time density and everything inside the dense bubble will appear faster to outside viewers, decrease it and it will appear slower to outside viewsers. Although relatively to the viewer inside the bubble, the speed is always the same.
I use this theory to explain the universe as well. There is no time density out of the universe, so nothing can cross its "boundaries".
Energy will decrease the time density, make the universe bigger and relatively "slower", and produce repulsive gravity (I believe energy is the antimatter everyone seeks for).
Matter, in the other hand, will increase the time density, make the universe smaller and relatively "faster", and produce atractive gravity.
No forces are required to keep the time density in place. Just like magnetic fields in tapes, forces are only required to "mold" the time once, then it will stay put until other forces "mold" it again.
This is my stupid, dogmatic and uninformed theory about space, time and gravity, so moderating it down if you wish. It can be used to explain black holes and gravitational fields as well.
Well, that's if they're following the scientific method. Scientists are human, and are just as prone to being stuck in a certain mindset as the rest of us; this is why it's been observed that new ideas in science more often gain ground by the "old guard" dying off than by being "converted" to the new theory.
Consider the resistance to Einstein's relativity theory - and how Einstein himself never accepted the randomness of quantum mechanics.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The only mysterious force that has effected any known space probe is humanity. And we're not nearly as mysterious as we claim to be.
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
Ah, Now I understand: They actually do know everything, but if they admitted that, their funding supply would get cut off!
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
It's very simple. They are being deflected by the cell membrane.
When you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
No Text
It's slowing down, while the matrix is busy building the outter space. The question is: does the matrix knows what falls besides that point?
sign(c14n(envelop(this)), x509)
> Atheists have just as much faith as theists... maybe you mean agnostics?
Um... no. Just because some nutjob suddenly becomes filled with the joy of his newfound faith in the god Krijahhd-ahhhhrrr-[click-click] does not suddenly mean that I have faith that his god doesn't exist. I never believed in him in the first place. Are you saying that my lack in belief in some god I've never heard of is faith? Or is it the absence of belief? Maybe the gods I don't know about would appeal to me and inspire faith. That doesn't mean that right now I am not an atheist because I could have faith. The absence of faith is not the same thing as faith that nothing else exists.
Agnosticsism can be, and often is, a characteristic of Atheism. They are not mutually exclusive terms.
Atheists don't have a monopoly on doubt or on scientific objectivity, as gp stupidly suggests. Neither do they have nearly as much faith as a theist, as you suggest. This is built into the definitions of the terms. Agnosticism is doubt and or a sense that the existence of a god is unprovable, and can be manifest in a theist or Atheist.
Affect and effect are two different verbs, with related but quite different meanings.
Affect is the more common. To affect something is to alter it, usually but not always in a harmful way.
Effect is less common. To effect something is to cause it to happen. I noticed people starting to use this more commonly about eight years ago. Soon afterwards, people started to use the verb "to effect" instead of the verb "to affect", unaware of the difference in meaning. The difference is so strong that these people often end up saying the opposite of what they mean.
here is a good reference.
Perhaps there is a Planet X out there. Pluto was postulated on Neptune anomalies, but Pluto turned out to be too small.
Perhaps the Sun has a binary brown dwarf out there so cold and small it hasnt been detected yet.
what the Casmir effect is is an example of the pressure caused by virtual particles that are created from void space.
in void space you have particles and their anti-particles popping in and out of existence millions of times a second. that sudden appearance of matter causes a force and when taken in aggregate the resultant force can be quite large.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Sure it's infinitely large. It's also finitely dense. So we haven't quite filled it all yet. Some people might consider the effective universe to be just the space that's filled so far, but I think that's like calling a football field just the area surrounding the players before the snap.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
It's full of stars!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I know it wasn't that popular, but it was somewhat enjoyable. The probes have obviously hit the edge of the simulation ;)
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
We can only conclude this based on the radio transmissions received by the probes. What if the probes are crusing along just fine, and it's the transmissions that are being affected?
Is that NO ONE is two fucking words.
Thanks. Nice post otherwise, btw.
As everyone knows, spacetime is like a great black ocean criss-crossed with a bright blue grid, save only that this representation is in two dimensions (plus time), while the actual process happens in three(plus time). Significant masses float and bob on this ocean's surface, sending out ripples which distort the blue grid. These masses also happen to vibrate at the frequency of their mass, the accumulated harmonics of thier myriad energetic constituents and inertial qualities.
Just like a ripple on the surface of a liquid, by the effect we call gravity there is a trough-and-ridge structure surrounding the object in space time. These structural feature effects on spacetime are governed by such factors as the surface tension (E=mc^2), viscosity (planck constant) and temperature (CMB limit of ~3 Kelvin) of the continuum, the bouyancy(mass), size(volume) and speed (velocity) of the object thus placed.
The trough represents gravitational attraction, but the ridge describes a net negative effect (in other words, "anti-gravity").
Both the trough and the ridge have an average 'height' equal to the actual surface level of the surrounding medium, but the trough seems much deeper than the ripple seems tall- that is to say, the apparent gravitational attraction is far greater than the anti-gravital effect of the ridge. This is a very simple function to describe, it is commonly understood as the inverse square law of proportions (Newton). The main trough has much less area to find expression, being confined to the immediate area surrounding the object, while the ridge has the greater area to affect distortion, thus the appearing much weaker.
This effect seems almost invisible at our local scale (though numerous experiments have confirmed it), namely because of significant local interference (turbulence), which appears mainly as slight variations of gravitic potential, though which also lay in the trough of our host star, thus loosing again a significant proportion of inherent amplitude. It is curious to note that these ripples have heretofor been attributed to such things as 'groundwater storage' and 'ice coverage' on the surface of the planet Earth, a reasonable supposition about the variance in planetary mass, but a ridiculous consideration regarding system-wide gravity effects).
As these probes wend their way starward, they must cross over the features created and accumulated by the disturbance of our solar system. Just like watching a piece of driftwood tossed around by the tide, the probes must express curious responses to these forces.
By way of a final note, let me just say that there is much yet to be said on the secondary effects of this phenomenon, namely the interference patterns created by a large system in motion, the cumulative effects at scale, the 'apparent' expansion of our universe and the ramifications of the structure known as a 'black hole'
Signed,
Professor MOMOCROME
C'mon. Make an effort.
The probes prob got tagged by some alien teens and now thier father (who happens to be the head of an inter-galatic military base) has to reel them back in to make his sons wash off the spray paint :)
Hello, circular reasoning, glad you could join us.
Your're not stating your premise that there exists a "belief in non-existence." Bzzt! This means you are not adding to the conversation, because you're merely affirming an unstated (and unproven) premise. Allow me to add something, since you apparently can't be bothered.
People have a finite set of beliefs. We can't believe in the non-existence of all the things we don't know about. We simply lack beliefs in those things.
For my purposes, I know of no God. That is atheism. It can be coupled with agnosticism, eg there might be a God outside of my understanding, or I could be missing something, or maybe all those Christian dudes have some connection I don't. Regardless of YOUR belief, I personally know of no God. The terms agnostic and atheist are not exclusive.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/voyager1-03c.html contains some interesting data that may be a clue:
:-) ).
"The location of the heliopause, which marks the outermost edge of the solar system, is a subject of scientific speculation. In two papers recently published in the journal Nature, scientists debated whether Voyager 1 has already reached the termination shock, a sign that the heliopause may be near. The termination shock is caused by a reduction in the speed of the solar wind as it slams into cooler plasma at the edge of the solar system and is similar to the sonic boom that occurs on Earth when an airplane crosses the sound barrier."
So my guess (IANAAP) is they have lost their (solar) wind in the back they had and hence the decceleration. It may not be so simple, though. Perhaps the space on the inside of the heliopause sphere is constantly "sweeped" by solar wind and therefore might have lower density then surroundings (picture: we are in a kind of a solar bubble!
There is a way to put my hypotesis to test: check the temperature readings for signs of friction, or perhaps even cooling.
It's the space drag that's slowing them down. The vast inflow of tiny matter comming into / orbiting our Solar system.
Arrrrrgh. It be barnacles!
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Anyone rememember "The Crystal Spheres"?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The faithful make up stories to explain things ("And we are not willing to make up stories to explain the unexplainable").
The faithful don't attempt to explain things ("We don't admit defeat and say "oh well, must be gods way").
Here, let me help you. Attribution to a cause is a form of explanation. That means that vettemph did not imply that the faithful don't attempt to explain things.
>>I'm a Christian, yet I'll admit I can't explain everything.
Will you admit that you can't explain what happened before known space-time existed, or will you insist that I join you in taking a leap of faith in your religious values?
Now, since you couldn't understand the post, I will explain what it means.
>>We are not willing to make up stories to explain the unexplainable.
This most likely alludes to the "prime mover" ideal, aka God. Religion has used this as a bludgeon and know what? The rest of us are sick of hearing about how we have to do X, tithe X, and vote X because "God wants you to". Know what? God wants you to stfu, that's what God wants, okay? As for the second part:
>>We don't admit defeat and say "oh well, must be gods way". (those grapes were probably sour anyway)
Explaining something with "God" may work for the "faithful" but to others it remains unsatisfying. Consider the following: I sit down. You ask me why I did that. I say "well, it happened, and everything that happens is the will of God, therefore I did it because God exists". It's the equivalent of saying "Just because". It's an explanation, but a real crappy one compared to "There's a pebble in my shoe and I plan on removing it, so I sat down to do so".
Anything a-harmonizin' yet?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
This galaxy just sucks.
we've reached the edge of the petri dish.
Sheesh, some people really need a sense of humor. Is slashdot no longer a safe haven where geeks can be geeks? Or were they modded down because they were just not geeky enough?
It's funny. Laugh more often. I hear it's good for you.
gaining mass by gathering dust?
bj
My point is that "affect" and "effect" sound similar but have different meanings, although etymologically they are related. Similarly, "Austria" and "Australia" sound the same and have the same etymology (they both mean "South-ia"), but are in fact two different countries in different hemispheres.
If you say that Austria thrashed the USA at cricket today, you haven't made a "grammatical error", you've made a factual error. The headline of this article is a factual error. Pioneer 10 and 11 were effected by NASA, whatever they may have been affected by since.
Just as much faith? Someone smother this stupid Slashdot meme.
They're reluctant to leave the nest behind.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
What if the probes are actually encountering drag of some type. The sun has been blowing out particles in the form of solar wind for about 6 billion years. What if the these particles do not escape in to interstellar space as thought but instead go into orbit around the sun at about this distance. Over the billions of years these particles could build up till flying a spaceship into this area would slow it down and change it's direction.
If solar wind couldn't explain it what about left over gasses from the formation of the solar system? Theory states that the sun blew away all these gases from the inner solar system but what about outside? There has to be a region where these gases would still exist.
But ether from the effects of solar wind or left of matter from the begining of the solar system the effect would be the same. Inside the solar system space would be realitivly empty where the effect of solar wind, gravity from the planets, and light pressure from the sun would keep it "clean." Outside the solar system there would be an area where the gases form a shell around the system. These gases don't have enough energy to escape the suns weak gravity so they just stay there building up over the years.
In effect the probes would be hitting areas of space where the gase is more dense. If present in enough quantity it would slow the ship down. What about the voyager probes? Are they experincing the same effect?
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
See this on Fox News today:
"The term, an apparent reference to the stans of central Asia, is described as insensitive and offensive not just to "new citizens" but also to the Native Americans from whose language the word Dakota derives from"
Gaaak! All they really need is a proofreader.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Humankind's challenge is to evolve into something that can cross interstellar distances and colonize other solar systems efficiently. How this is to be accomplished (biomechanoid, or some other exotic technologies which are beyond our understanding) is an exercise left for future generations. Arthur C. Clark thought the same in The City and the Stars (et al) with the massless mind "Vanamonde" and his peers.
If such a species had already evolved, and FTL was available to it, we would be a sitting duck (assuming that we had desirable resources). As it stands, there is a great deal of time that must pass for such a species to reach us (hopefully).
The time required for interstellar colonization is nature's way of forcing us to be thorough and consistent, and to make many of our errors early on, perhaps before the effects upon our survival become critical.
Of course, this outlook for our initial stages of colonization must span hundreds of thousands of years. We might end up wiping ourselves out due to our infantile handling of the global ecology long before then.
But it's nice to have goals.
Maybe it finally reached Valinor, and Manwe is turning it back.
Yeah, I'm a geek.
Please mod me down again. I insist. I think you're all idiots anyway. This just proves it.
Space dust is dark matter.
Well... it was infinitely large yesterday. But it's bigger today. (Of course, "yesterday" and "today" being the terms associated with the Earth's spin around its axis -- something the universe itself could care less about, had it a mind of its own. "Yesterday" and "tomorrow" have no meaning within the context of the universe -- "Yesterday" could be when the BB happened. Would that be considered "yesterbang?"
I'm picking nits but, really.
Its not even my first language and I know how to write English better than that.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Everyone seems to be operating under the assumption that a force is acting to push the probes closer. What better describes what is going on is that the probes are no longer being influenced by an outward force (perhaps solar wind). So lets say theoretically that the sun's gravity as we observe it is Gsun. But with this additional force now detected, we're really seeing Gsun = Gactual - Fnew.
The laws of physics don't just stop working. More likely, we just aren't observing the phenomenon correctly.
"Q: Why are pioneer 10 & 11 moving off course?"
They're being hit with earth's "don't leave us here" force.
They left the water running back at NASA.
The probes are all male, and will not ask for directions.
Free beer at Alpha Centauri.
Just a misunderstanding caused by them leaving their turn signals on for the last million miles.
Another metric units mistake.
Last time I posted something like "it was a scientist who made your CPU possible", I got replies along the lines of "no bloody way. It was an engineer". Hence including that disclaimer this time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Uhhhh, The parent of the above post mentioned *NOTHING* about religion. It seems you have an axe to grind. In particular, you seem to be making genral sweeping statements about every religeon that has ever existed. It seems as if the guy just didn't know much about science. But, I think we all understand much more about "you".
Sorry, couldn't resist the temptation of adding quotation marks around "you". "You" have to admit that is funny. Laugh. It feels good.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The heliopause was the first thing I thought of when I saw this article on slashdot.
I'm honestly not getting the point of all the other threads here on the board, it should be pretty obvious what's going on out there.
Austria is that island where the toilets flush backwards, no?
Austria is an island, in the sense that it's surrounded by Europe.
I'm not sure about Austrian toilets, but I'm afraid they may resemble German toilets.
-kgj
-kgj
Just a thought, but if light were to move faster than the constant we asign to it, wouldn't objects moving away from us appear to slow down?
In more recent news... Strange forces AFFECT slashdot headline spelling.
something is Affecting the probes, not "Effecting"
while we're at it:
"sepArate", NOT "sepErate"
loose = "luce" = "turn it loose", "loosely coupled"
lose = "looz" = "lost the game", "lose my my mind"
It took Pioneer 10 and 11 some 30 years to reach the point where this effect began to show up. If these planned followup probes aren't quite a bit faster, it'll be 2034 or later before astronomers and physicists start to get useful data back.
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
What makes you think the universe is infinitly large? Do you also think the surface of the Earth is infinitely large, because you can work across it for an infinite amount of time?
Most likely the universe is a n-dimentional sphere, the reason why this is believed is because we can still pick up echoes of the big bang, which would otherwise have left the remaining universe. Ofcause this assumes there was a big bang, and what we are picking up are the echoes of it and not interstellar pr0n.
The probes are temporary swapped out, while the Universe Emulator is loading necessary modules for areas outside of this Solar system. :)
Hyperom.com
I would question whether it is a lack of understanding of the foundations in the Theories of Gravity and/or perhaps whether the theories are even correct, rather than our understanding of the Laws of Gravity. To my understanding, the probe(s) have not yet violated any of our Laws of Gravity whereas the force that is exerted on them is unknown. The Theories of Gravity are a question here because we assume that it takes and dense mass to produce a gravitational effect.
Besides, violating the law will get you a jail sentence, (at least in the United States). So I would suggest that the probes be careful unless they want to be returned to earth and sent to Guantanamo Bay for questioning and physical abuse, ah, I mean torture, ah, I mean pornography abuse, ah, I mean interrogation, yea that's the right word, Interrogation!
I believe energy emitted in the form of gravitational waves is supposed to come from the angular momentum of the mass. In other words, the shed energy causes it to spin more slowly.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
One of my favorite demonstrations from Physics class was when my teacher accelerated a ring of (non-ferrous!) aluminum into the cieling (nearly broke a light fixture) using an electromagnetic field.* This was the same day as he showed various non-ferrous pendulums being slowed to a stop in a fixed magnetic field due to eddy currents created in side the pendulum.
Moral of the story is that, even absent influences such as gravity and friction, a fixed magnetic field can change (slow) the velocity of a non-ferrous metallic object. Granted, though, you have a point about the fast drop in intensity with distance for magnetic fields...
*I don't remember how the device was constructed, or if the teacher even bothered describing it in detail. All I remember is that it plugged into 110 V AC, had a button he'd press, and it buzzed rather loudly while the button was pressed. The aluminum ring was shot into the acoustic tiles in the 20-foot ceiling hard enough to damage the tile, and the teacher admitted that he had actually broken a light fixture in a previous semester. Since then he aims more carefully.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Science is all about model building!
You should listen to high energy particle physicists. These are the people who study quarks, mesons, leptons, bozons, fermions, electrons and much more.
They call the result of their work "The Standard Model", not "Truth Revealed", not "The Absolute Reality", but "The Standard Model".
This implies that it is subject to change without notice, with every discovery of a new particle or new and different behaviour of an existing component of "The Standard Model".
There is an aphorism which goes, "The biggest mistake that you can make is to confuse a model of a thing with the thing in itself.".
Scientists do not explain why their models work, they just try to make them like the thing we intuitively know works, i.e., the Universe!
You say:
"We do have a very small and limited view of the universe and really don't know that much in the overall picture of things."
You understate your case:
Everything we know is wrong! and always must be so because all measurements must necessarily be inaccurate so all theories must necessarily be inaccurate (based on inaccurate measurements) and incomplete (Godel)!
Fortunately, building models is fun, especially when they do work at least partly like the real Universe!
P.S.
Godel's Theorem is all about the logical impossibilities that can arise when any statement is self-referential. Therefore, since there is only one known Universe and we are a part of it, any statement we can make about the Universe must be self-referential and so might be wrong, contradictory or incomplete!
Granted, it's a bit of a leap to go from this effect to lacing the galaxy with negative mass...
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
my above post is in response to its parent post which has (thankfully) been modded into oblivion.
I was making light of the original poster, not the catholic church.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
The MOND theory consists of the modifications required in Newton's law of gravity in order to get galactic rotation curves to match observations. The problem is, nobody has succeeded in getting MOND or any other modified-gravity theory to simultaneously account for (a) galactic rotation curves, (b) cosmological expansion, and (c) "seeding" the structure present in the early universe, let alone (d) being consistent with special relativity. The right mix of dark matter can account for all of those.
It just means time travelers have no need to be warm.
After all if you invent time travel, you might be able to invent DNA so you could survive vacuum/coldness of space and/or create infinite energy from space itself.
We HAVE detected dark matter... by it's gravitational signature.
This is done by examining the rotational velocity of stars around the galactic center of a galaxy in question. (If there is more mass inside a given star's orbit, the star will rotate faster.) When you form the velocity profile of a given galaxy you find that the stars orbit much faster than can be accounted for by summing up the gravitational influence of all the stars and dust in the galaxy. This deviation increases with distance from the center of the galaxy. The dark matter that is present is a huge amount, way more than can be accounted for by any reasonable distribution of black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, and planets.
Regarding whether gravity behaves differently over distance than our current mathemematics holds (inverse square law)... I think this would have been noticed long ago based on the orbital dynamics of our own solar system (which is understood to a very high degree of precision) as well as through the study of numerous nearby binary and trinary star systems.
bif
wag more
bark less
What? No puerile jokes about this yet?
Oh, the brits haven't woken up yet...
Dark matter has got to be the most flimsy piece of science that has come about since the idea of space being full of ether. (How else could light travel from the Sun to the Earth?). It's like inventing truth for the sake of making the world make sense to you or your paradigm.
Dark Matter is a bunch of bull crap invented to make physicists feel better about not believing in God and His creative powers.
But realistically, the "that's funny" comment indicating a strange anomaly is replaced by the modern equivilent of WTF!!!!!
Seriously, I think that any radically unusual scientific discovered will probably be accompanied by one of the following:
a) What the [insert explitive here]
b) Holy sh*t, take a look at this
c) Damnit, WTF is going on with this... waaaaait a second.
d) Wait a second, that's not suppose to happ...
That, or you could just go with "(e) Zappppp... crackle.... guuuurgle.... arrgggh" and scientist #2 gets a nobel prize based on the investigation of the unusual demise of scientist #1
Yes, you're quite right of course. We base our logic on our emotional values. Which is why some people see p->q and others see p->~q. I simply take issue with people who imagine that (p\/~p)->(whatever they feel).
Mod parent +insightful.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
The problem with this theory (that gravity doesn't fall off with 1/r^2) is that it breaks a number of deeper laws of physics. In a nutshell what it means is that a full circle isn't quite 360 degrees. For an anomolous acceleration towards the sun a full circle would be slightly less than 360 degrees. Furthermore this effect increases with distance (before presumably dropping off again) since we don't see this anomoly in planetary orbits. It's extremely hard to explain an effect that only occurs at some distance, but not closer or further away.
This concept isn't entirely unprecedented - general relatively predicts "frame dragging" around rotating masses. In fact we recently launched a satellite to test for frame dragging around the earth. But we know this can't explain this anomoly since the effect drops off with distance from the mass.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Before jumping on the MOND bandwagon, be aware that it has problems.
Those who believe in gravitrons(gravity particles) believe that accelerating objects emit them in the same way accelerating charges emit photons (electromagnetic particles).
There's actually a noun and verb form of each word:
effect n: something that's created, like in "neat special effects"
affect v: to be changed by something, like in "affected by the new requirement"
effect n: property of a personal nature, like in "gather your effects"
effect v: to create something, like in "to effect a new business strategy"
I don't think the headline is correct. According to WordNet, the verb definitions for "effect" and "affect" are as follows:
The headline should clearly be "Mysterious force affects Pioneer 10 & 11 probes", should it not ? The second definition for "affect" is exactly what this sentence is saying."
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
This story is just a continuation of the experiences of meteorologists and pilots in the early days of flying.
When the first aircraft flew, they looked at the clouds above them, as they flew at 5000 feet and estimated that those thunderstorm tops were at least 15,000 feet!
When aircraft flew at 20,000 feet, they said that the thunderstorm tops must be about 30,000 feet!
In cold war days, when the U2 was top secret, there was a story circulating that one had its engines flame out at 90,000 feet in a thunderstorm anvil.
Finally, in the days of satellites, we can look down on those cloud tops.
The humbling moral of this is, "We just didn't have a clue until we were actually able to go there!!!".
The same thing was true of jet streams. We all knew about the geostrophic wind scale and all about the thermal wind relationship, and should have been able to use knowlege of low and middle atmosphere wind gradients to extrapolate winds in the higher atmosphere.
But 200+ knot winds at 30-40,000 feet caught everybody by surprise and caused aircraft to get lost or run out of fuel and crash. Again, we didn't have a clue until we went up there.
The only answer is that we will have to go out there someday, or we will never have a clue!
No, the quantum vacuum in "void space" exerts no net force. (You can see this by simple symmetry!) The Casimir effect generates a force as described by other posters: a geometry is constructed that excludes certain virtual wavelengths. In empty space, there is no such exclusion, and no force -- not even a small one that adds up.
No science fiction here.
... read.
http://www.phys.uconn.edu/faculty/mallett.html
This guy has achieved it
~hylas
Maybe they are in the grips of a Borg
tracter beam.
There is a giant fence, enclosing the 'Earth Monkey Zoological Park'. It was placed there by our Galactic Overlords, to keep us Earth Monkey's inside the park.
Don't try to intuit the model, just trust the maths.
The moon is made of green cheese, therefore all fish ride bicycles.
Did you read the original parent?
As for axes to grind, the only sweeping generalization he made was that religion dealt with "absolute truth". He didn't say it failed, or that it was a dead-end. If you want to go off half-cocked, go do it on a religious themed site. Not here.
>>>It seems as if the guy just didn't know much about science.
Which may have something to do with why he got flamed here. Actually, it sounds like he knows even less than "not much" about science. He was troll-flamebaiting. Are you taking up his banner? Do you really want to be known as someone who thinks that science some kind of sham or hustle? Do you in fact think that?
Thanks, but we're full up with ignorance today, maybe you can visit reality next week. Buh bye.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
That turns out not to be the case.
Regardless of whether the universe is finite or infinite, we would still see the cosmic background radiation. Even in an infinite universe, there is no time at which the background radiation is not visible: we always continue to see it, just originating from farther and farther points.
In fact, the current experimental evidence is incapable of determining whether we are in an infinite or a finite universe: it's right on the boundary. If inflationary theory is correct, we may never know which it is: if the universe was finite, inflation would have caused it to expand to a size so large that, to the accuracy of our instruments, it's indistinguishable from an infinite universe.
Vonnegut is where i would put my money on!
FYI: Chrono-synclastic Infundibula is a spatial phenom found in the Vonnegut book, "Sirens of Titian."
I may be posting too late to get an answer, but there are a few physics-related questions I've always wondered about, and thought maybe the fellow geeks here could postulate some solutions/answers.
1. - Does gravity travel faster than light? If the sun were to disappear instantaneously, would Earth continue to travel in a curved orbit for another 9 minutes (the time it takes light to reach Earth from the Sun), or would we immediately begin traveling in a straight line?
2. - Faster-than-light travel? If I send an object in one direction at 0.75*c (3/4 the speed of light), and another object in the opposite direction, also at 0.75*c, aren't they traveling apart from each other at 1.5*c? That is, aren't they traveling faster than light, relative to each other? How is that possible under Einstien's theory of General Relativity? Isn't this situation supposed to be impossible?
3. - Faster-than-light communication? If I had a steel rod that was 4,000 miles long, and I pushed on one end of it, would a spectator at the other end see their end of the rod move simultaneously, or would something about relatively cause a delay? If I rigged up an optical transmitter and receiver at both ends, couldn't this facilitate "faster-than-light" communication? That is, say I had an LED facing upwards, and an optical reciever hanging overtop of it, reading the light from the LED. When the rod is overtop of the LED, it is blocking the light, and the sensor reads a '0'. If I move the rod forward a bit, it is no longer obscuring the LED, and the receiver reads a '1'.
Now, if at the other end, I have a similar setup (simply inverted), couldn't I achieve faster-than-light communication by moving the rod back and forth? Couldn't the movement at the other end, blocking and un-blocking the LED (and then inverted) be used to transmit binary data?
Is there something in "Relativity" that says this wouldn't work? Ignoring the practical limits (how do you get such a long steel rod, how much would it weight, etc.), could this actually facilitate faster-than-light communication?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
The correct usage would be "AFFECTS". DUH.
Umm...shouldn't the headline read:"Mysterious Force Affects Pioneer 10 & 11 Probes"? Otherwise, we're saying that the mysterious force made them. Of course, that would be much more interesting.
Haven't you seen the Truman Show? The universe as we know it probably ends just outside our solar system. I just hope the real Universal Studios doesn't drop any of their lighting apparatus on us.
There is actually nothing in SR to stop you travelling to Prox. Centauri in a week. The catch is, it would have to be your week, not ours.
In our rest frame, your journey would take over 3 years and be over 3 light years long; in your frame (travelling at a speed, relative to us, of close to c) your journey time would be a week (time dilation) but also, in your frame, the distance to Prox. Centauri would be less than a light-week (space contraction). "How much of your time will it take to travel X light years if you accelerate at 30ft/sec2?" is a standard undergraduate exam question.
The constraints are really energy (getting a rocket powerful enough) and not relativity. Science fiction writers tend to use hyperdrives because even if travel takes only a short time for the traveller it's difficult to get a plot working if the travel takes years or centuries for people in rest frames.
To "effect" is to bring about. If the force has brought about or produced two probes, it is even more mysterious than the author supposed!
Nerd
Geek
Holy crap...get a life
This post... +5 Geek
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
It's the edge of the Petri dish.
... the buggers, scouting our solar system before coming to vivisect us all.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
America's oldest space craft is probably Pioneer 6, which may still be operating in orbit around the Sun. It was contacted on it's 35th anniversay on Dec. 2000 (http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/ pioneer/PNhist.html)
It equipment is so old and the Deep Space Network is so busy with newer missions they don't check on it very often.
Next correction is that these spacecraft passed Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970's, not the 1980's.
(Follow links about projects at same sight as above).
BBCode. Moderate parent -1 Jeez Should Determine Where He Posts Before He Uses Fscking BBCode.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
We reached the end of the universe. It's just that simple. I mean c'mon, infinite space. Yeah right, like anyone believed that. Now we have conclusive proof of the matter (or anti-matter). "I've just gotten back from the beginning of the universe and what can I say, we had a bang of a good time"... (paraphrase from The Restaurant at the end of the universe)
Just do a google search on +"rendezvous with rama" +"morgan freeman" and get a whole mess of links.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Who things we should do two more of these with updated equiptment so in 30+ years the next generation will have something to gather data from! :D Should send one on the y axis then and get a "top down view of our system" and then of the galaxy, and then of..............(trasmission ended)
Take 3 or 4 pieces of rebar, roughly 2-3 ft in length, laid beside each other such that they form a bundle. With a standard electrical cable, start wrapping the bundle of rebar tightly from bottom to top, but don't overlap. When you near the top of the bundle, bring the end back down and attack both loose ends to the plug via a switch. You should have several hundred turns, but do not overlap the turns, as this will create equal but opposite EM fields, thus negating the effect. Plug the switch into a standard wall socket, load with metal ring, press the button, and watch fly.
The biggest problem with your theory (and there are numerous problems) is that none of the matter in the solar system orginated from the solar system. It orgianted elsewhere and collected here to form the nebula that became the planets and sun. That fact shoots your theory to hell.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Verb:
Affect, to alter eg. The patient was affected by the medication.
Effect, to cause eg. In order to effect change, something must be done.
Noun:
Effect, an outcome eg. In order to have the desired effect, the proper dosage must be given.
Affect, a subjective mood eg. The depressed patient had a flattened affect (had trouble feeling emotion).
thefreedictionary.com is a coat tail rider of Wikipedia. They give attribution in fine print at the bottom, but why not support the source?
_ dy namics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian
While that would make a nice and simple explanation, I think that this paper is flawed, since it does not take into account the different density of the kuiper belt in the directions the Pioneers are headed. The kuiper belt is most concentrated around the ecliptic (the plane the planets are moving in as well), and Pioneer 10 is more or less within that plane, while Pioneer 11 is about 17 degrees above it, which should make a difference. Oh, and they got the mass of the spacecraft wrong, it's 258kg without fuel (some should be left), and they're assuming 241kg. Their speculation about dust particles is not very credible, as the pioneers would not survive many of those breaking them down at the observed rate.
A civilization advanced enough would not need stars for energy. They could create their own by harnessing atoms of interstellar gases (mostly hydrogen/helium) and other particles.
In other words I believe that they could easily convert any mass to energy as easily as we use batteries in our iPods.
However, the SCOX theory is also credible. I'd go either way for the hypothesis.
the sun also produces a magnetic field known as the heliosphere, whats to say these little metal chunks floating away on momentum alone aren't being affected by that?
Finally explain the physics involved in doom3's gernades.
Couldn't the problem just be drag? Perhaps there is slightly more gas than was expected outside the solar system. That would cause a very small deceleration at the speeds that the probes are travelling... By the way, they're not really in DEEP space yet, since they're probably still in solar gas from the sun, but what are they in? Shallow space, 'Up to your chest' space....?
***You learn something Every day. And then you die.***
I hope you don't work for NASA. Back to real science, there is 1 H atom per cubic metre of "Space" and would suggest a probability of accumulative deceleration cannot be discounted over such a long distance. NASA should know this, I think someone out for more funding
Its kind of like the ion drive in reverse
As for your intergalactic fart drive, only your dark matter theory may hold weight.}B-)
What exactly is the article author saying when he writes: "...appear to be in the grip of a mysterious force that is holding them back." I read along to the end of his stuff hoping to find out exactly what the observed 'anomaly' is. Are the spacecraft accelerating less than expected or are they decelerating more than expected? What is the rough magnitude of the difference between the observed and expected value? .01%? 10%? 100%? What is the effect of the anomaly on the expected time for the spacecraft to reach another solar system? These are the sorts of questions that the author should have addressed.
It's a great lunchtime diversion. I love to fly from one Jovian satellite to another.
What it really needs, though, is a "warp factor" display. Geeks have no clue how fast "1.104 AU/sec" is, but say "warp 8.2" and we get it.
Constitutionally Correct
KAAAAAAHN!
and not one mention that we are possibly staring in a very huge truman show. the probes have just hit the edge of the stage, and the producers have to figure out what to do next.
The function of life is to mediate the matter/energy state(s) of the Universe so that there is no end to time.
;p
If all matter is converted to energy, you have a Big Bang, and begin the Universe & time all over. If all energy condenses to matter, you have a Big Crunch, and the end of time, & of the Universe, (and maybe another Big Bang, but that is another debate.)
The function of life is to evolve to the point where it can help regulate the matter/energy state of the Universe, by employing fission processes if the Universe is condensing too much into matter and (less likely;) fusion processes if the Universe gets too hot. Normally, stars and other naturally occuring fusion processes are sufficient to prevent the Universe from overheating.
So, I respectfully submit that the jury is still out on Time Travel!
The problem is that you run out no matter how efficient you are. Ie, if you can convert mass to energy, then eventually you will run out of energy (or more accurately temperature differences to generate work) because you run out of mass.
Then that would tend to support the impossibility proof.
Tell that to the neutrino guys I've worked with.
Neutrinos have non-zero rest mass, and hence are known and detectable dark matter. (It's worth noting, though, that they're "hot" dark matter, and "cold" dark matter is more like what you're complaining about. Neutrinos also only account for maybe 20% of the needed dark matter.)
In preparation for the U.S. Presidential election, the probes are slowing to allow for either redeployment to a post-cold war posture by the Bush administration, or possible recall by a Kerry administration. At any rate, their movements will clearly be uffected. DUH.
Bear with me as I shatter all your preconceptions of space travel.
According to Einstein's understanding of the fabric of the universe, if we can assume he knew what he was talking about, large masses stretch the fabric of space. This stretching can best be described with a trampoline, bowling ball and a golf ball as an analogy.
If you consider the trampoline to exist in a physically inert environment, then the "gravitational" pull of the bowling ball as it sinks into and stretches the trampoline will bring the golf ball into an orbit around the bowling ball. This is the reality of our solar system as we know it to be.
Now, what most people probably don't consider beyond the annals of gravitational pull is that space IS time. Even scientists have a hard time thinking of the two as mutual. One of humanities greatest strengths is also its weakness, the ability to segregate concepts into separate forms to be more easily analyzed.
Time dilation occurs for the same reasons gravitational pull exists. They are both symptoms of the same disease. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. To our naked eyes the fabric of space and time, as far as we can tell, is uniform throughout. However, in the introspective eye of the universe, it is not. Those dips caused in the trampoline by large masses which makes gravitational pull possible are also affecting what we preceive as "time".
Why? Because, space is time, the shorest path is a straight line, and spacetime is no longer straight.
What we are perceiving from our subjective plane of reality, that these crafts we have built are "slowing" down, is an inaccurate description of what is happening. They are travelling at the same velocity, there is no mystical "dark matter" impeding their progress. It is the time fabric of the universe, which makes the Earth travel around the Sun and galaxies revolve around each other in an almost perpetual dance, who is the culprit.
The trampoline, with its uniform flat shape, is no longer an accurate analogy of what is going on. I cannot depend on anything you can percieve as an explaination of what is happening. You must release your inner inhibitions and your subjective reality and consider for a moment what I am proposing.
Scientific thinkers have already grimaced at this point, and rightfully so. Only some of what I am saying is provable, the rest is opinion. Believe, if you will, that I am wrong, or believe that I am right. But, please, read on...
Just as massive objects stretch time, the absence of massive objects stretch time. As the craft move farther from the gravitational pull of our sun, they will enter a "gravitational push" if you want to call it that. Just as massive objects dip down in some areas of spacetime, the lack of massive objects in others push up on the fabric.
It is known a perfect vacuum cannot be created. At any point if you create such a vacuum, it will fill with energy and then cease to become a perfect vacuum. I surmise that the bubbling effect I have described in the fabric of spacetime may be caused by the existance of a perfect vacuum, because of its distance from the sun.
As such, there is no friction impeding the craft, only the distances have become imperceivable more vast. What was a slight curve in space to us before, only perceivable by our understanding of localized time, has become a deep one.
Feel free to speculate. I hope you found this an interesting read.
I wonder if the discrepancy could be caused by an interaction between the more than 7 hour lightspeed lag between the spacecraft and the sun, and the craft's velocity.
perhaps Gravity isn't
Gravity=(G(M1*M2))/R^2
but is instead
Gravity=(G(M1*M2))/(R-((R/C)*V))^2
where V=Delta R
-John Fenley
It's not the force...it's the schwarz!
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
The title should be "Mysterious Force Affects Pioneer 10 & 11 Probes." Just a pet peeve of mine.
Currently hooked on AMP
You mean that our theory of gravity is flawed and this would explain the "dark matter"...
My understanding is that this possibility has lost favor because the different velocity dynamics that have been observed in a variety of galaxies would necessitate a different mathematical law of gravity for each one.
On the other hand, the varied velocity curves observed could be explained by the straight-forward presumption that each of the galaxies in question are clumped together with different distributions of dark matter.
wag more
bark less
Matter that is not being "touched" or acted upon is idle and the more idle it becomes the less structure it has. Finally breaking down into a quiet string. At this point if there is not a force acting on the slow matter it will act as a broken subway turnstyle, pulling energy and modifying direction from anything interacting with it and brining it back into a agitated state.
However, with proper agitation, such as the force emitted by a rotating object, or high energy emission from a star the slow matter becomes active and the turnstyle starts letting fares through without charge. Which would make "gravity" as we know it the opposite of what we know... since the sun is fundamentally a massive agitator the environment allows uninterrupted movement, and since our planet is spinning it keeps us from becoming piles of squish.. just not squish the way we normally think of it.
Whats this mad line of reasoning tell us? Nothing, except getting out of the solar system might be more difficult than we originally thought, spaceships spinning in movies was more accurate than we could have guessed, antigravity might be possible by slowing matter, and as usual answers are as plentiful and accurate as opinions and orifices, everybodys got one, and can never be certain of whats going to come of one.
"This drift meant that the craft were experiencing a constant acceleration directed towards the Sun"
This rules out dust or a higher density inter stellar medium which would affect the probes in a different way.
-- Contradictions only exist in thought - not in reality.
I heard Stephen Hawkings (audiobook), "A Brief History of Time" and if I'm not mistaken isn't the universe expanding at an infinite rate? If so, doesn't it eventually contract back at the same rate?
Assuming so, what if humankind as we know it is just under 30 years from completely returning back to the nothing from whence we came?
Seriously, doesn't time reverse itself and eventually the infamous "big bang" completely implodes back unto itself? If this is the case, what if our 'human built satellite' is simply catching the first 'wave' of this implosion and thus slowing down (to our perception)...?
I'm basing this on nothing more than speculation and documented science from the likes of Newton, Einstein, Gibson and Pynchon.
(and Twain too)
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
So, all I have to do to go faster than light is imagine myself in the past.
I don't know if you understand basic physics but if you hit something like dust in space your acceleration will most likely be negative.
You basically came out and said that dust can't be the right answer without having a shred of evidence.
The only way to refute the dust theory is to prove:
1. The negative acceleration is too high for just dust. And that the probe would be destroyed if it hit too many particles of that size or number.
or
2. Show that the amount of dust is far too little to cause a negative acceleration of that amount.
or
3. Show that the negative acceleration is too consistent for dust fields. (measure often enough that the randomness of the distribution of the dust field is ruled out)
This assumes that a civilization that is old enough to have made time travel and live until the Universe is cold is not old enough to have either 1) discovered another solution (such as transfering to a parallel dimension, if such things exist) or 2) matured enough to accept the inevitable (which is that time is an arrow, and that destroying the past would negate the future).
I think it's more along the lines of the fact that any timeline which results in past-time-travel (instead of future-time-travel) ends up having itself destroyed by the effects of people going back and altering the circumstances of the time machine.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The grandparent poster was pointing out that the decelerating force is in the direction of the sun, not the direction that the probes have travelled from.
You are, of course, correct. However the point I was trying to make was that in the context of the sentence, "effect" is the noun form of the verb that should have been in the sentence, "affect". Using the verb form would change the meaning entirely, so I assumed it was "affect" that was intended.
:)
I must admit, I simply made the comment because the misuse of the word annoys me. I didn't expect to generate a mini-storm
Daar is nie 'n lepel nie
my oh my...maybe it's small particles from the kuiper belt? Both probes are around the right distance from Sol to start encroaching on the fringes. It would only take a very small particle to damage the probes. Highly likely.
Also, most proto systems observed so far have bow shocks, denser sections of matter pile by the solar wind from the host star. Wow, maybe this is happening?
The laws of physics don't bloody well change for all those morons out there thinking that. My reasoning? Gravitational lensing on absolute distant objects is pretty much spot on to what Einstein predicted. And guess who Einstein's general theory of relativity and special theory of relativity were based on? Yup. Sir Isaac Newtons Principia Mathematica.
God the human race is definetly getting dumber as we go on in time...
Dave
Slashdot can go and get fucked.
WEll maybe it is just GOD saying you've gone to far...
The probes aren't moving straight away from the sun, the acceleration they are experiencing is not in the opposite direction of travel, hense it isn't drag.
A discussion of this phenomenon appears in the 4 October 1999 issue of Newsweek magazine (See also the December 1998 issue of Scientific American.) The mystery of the tiny unexplained acceleration towards the sun in the motion of the Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 and Ulysses spacecraft remains unexplained. /html
Blarg!
Your terrible affect is having an equally terrible effect on my gastrointestinal tract. It makes me nauseous.
-Otto
As far as I understand, there have not been signals recieved from Pioneer-10 since Jan 2003..
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1972-012A.html
So, has a new signal been recieved, or is this just new analysis of old data?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Hm this reminded for some reason of the truman show. The universe looks real from a distance, but close up we discover it's only a plywood set setup somewhere on the western coast. Quickly everyone destroy all your technology and stop them from filming us for the amusement of the Grebulons!
Get me a meat pie floater!
...When all you can do is attack spelling, grammer and punctuation, you might just as well admit to loosing the battle.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Wouldn't you need some additional resistance to keep it from being a brief electromagnetic field followed shortly thereafter by a rather localized power outage?
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
I've noticed that these two stars are conspicuously absent from Celestia. Conspicuous because B is the closest white dwarf star IIRC - it should definitely be included. So much for learning what the sky looks like from Vulcan!
Constitutionally Correct
The problem with that concept is that this slowing down has been noticed for several years, and is something that has happened well before hitting the heliopause.
One other very interesting scientific issue with the Voyager probes and with some of the Pioneer probes (like Pioneer 10) is that they have pushed back the limits of what was previously thought to be the heliopause.
I will conceed the point that the Voyager probes were considered to be very close to the Heliopause approaching what is presumed to be a "Helioshock", a region of charged particles that would be somewhat analogous to the Van Allen Belts around the Earth but surrounding the Sun and incredibly larger. Still, from the descriptions of the Helioshock I find it very difficult to believe that this relatively small region would significantly slow down the probes. I would be more inclined to believe that it would send electric current through the probe and shorting out the systems, but even then I find it unlikely. The expected jolt of electricity is going to be considerably less than the Van Allen belts of Jupiter and Saturn, which all of these probes flew through as well and was well documented in terms of its affects on the probes systems.
Keep in mind that we are talking interstellar space here, where you find atoms the size of your thumb because there is just nothing out there to keep electrons from shell 5000, even on ordinary hydrogen. It is really empty of just about anything you can pick at. If it ran into a comet while out there, all that would happen is that the transmission would suddenly end, and that is very unlikely. Hmmm.... maybe that is what happened?
Ahh, but the gravitational contstant should not be any longer accepted as a "universal constant" as time and space can be different in different 'places' in the universe.
The mysterious force is the gravitational attraction of hordes of thrashing spellcheckers without grammar rules, passing on the conversion of "Effects" to "Affects". Such errors generate "cold, dark information", which achieve critical proportions and affect the curvature of spacetime, in an imaginary/complex dimension that's hard to recognize.
--
make install -not war
The only present theoretical possibility for FTL travel is the Alcubierre Curve;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
where a bubble of space is separated from the rest of space by fields of energy.
The space in front of the bubble is contracted at FTL speed while the space behind the bubble is expanded at FTL speed, thus resulting in forward propulsion of the bubble at FTL speed.
The ship is carried along inside the bubble at FTL speed but since the ship is not moving relative to the bubble of space surrounding it, there are no relativity effects on the ship.
Whenever I post here, and the post already has replies, I read them all before adding mine.
Filter settings are for reading, not communicating.
I use Mozilla, and middle-click the post's link (i.e., the #10234469 above, to the right of the original poster's name). Then I switch to that page, middle-click on the "X replies beneath your current threshold" link (to open that in another tab) and then left-click on "Reply to This".
Then I switch to the newest tab, and read all the replies.
Only then, if what I had to say is original, do I switch back to the link I click "Reply" in and start typing.
Yeah, it's a bit more work, but it tends to avoid the Offtopic mods.
Occasionally I'll "go upstream" to see what all the fuss is about, and in fact that's what I just did and found that my comment is barely worth posting since it doesn't describe what you did: you posted a top-level comment, not a reply. However, you could still achieve what I described by changing your threshold to "-1" and the comments to "Threaded" which will only show the top-level comments, so I'll hit Submit anyway.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Thanks for the link to the explanation, that was quite interesting. One thing I definitely don't get, however, is how the author of that page arrives at their arbitrary (to me) definition of Bob and Carol's present. I'm no expert in this area, but what reading I have done suggests that space-time is a cone (the mathematical sort, with two of your everyday cones coming together at the point), with the present being the singular point of junction. I took that to mean that there is only one present, with nowhen else for anyone else to be. Is this model then only relevant for a single reference point? And even if so, any clues on how the orionsarm person figured on Bob's and Carol's present, existing in me's past?
(scratches head)...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."