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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."
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.
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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 :)
And why wasn't it seen until now? And why did it start effecting the two craft at the same time? Provide a few more details of the radiation pressure hypothesis, or better a few links and I'll be more apt to believe you. Until then I remain skeptical. The Pioneer Anomaly has been around for a little while, long enough to generate more than a few ( Google Search of Citebase)) papers written to try to explain the anomaly. Dismissing them all out of hand in two sentences is NOT good science, but then hey, this is Slashdot, what do I expect?
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
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.
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".
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
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
Dark Matter is a theoretical concept we as to yet have not seen or detected. Thus, it does seem similar to "ether" and serves the same purpose, albeit fitting much more nicely into explanations.
I prefer the equally possible explanation -- that gravity is not linear, and performs differently at large distances than it does at small ones. This can explain the effect of dark matter without all the flubberyjubbery of matter that can't be seen and can't be detected.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
According to the first episode of Enterprise, it takes 4 days to reach Kronos at approximately warp 4. That puts the Klingon homeworld only about 1ly away from Earth, which is 4x closer than the nearest star.
Logically, we must assume 1. the episode is wrong (correct assumption) or 2. the Klingon Empire is a LOT closer than you thought, Mr. Vulcan.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!