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More Spacecraft Velocity Anomalies
ZonkerWilliam recommends a bulletin from the American Institute of Physics, which discusses a study noting that recent spacecraft, such as NEAR, appear to display velocity anomalies much like those seen in Pioneer 10 (which were observed beginning ten years ago). The anomalies amount to up to 13 mm/sec., with a measurement accuracy of 0.1 mm/sec. Quoting: "A new look at the trajectories for various spacecraft as they fly past the Earth finds in each case a tiny amount of surplus velocity. For craft that pursue a path mostly symmetrical with respect to the equator, the effect is minimal. For craft that pursue a more unsymmetrical path, the effect is larger."
Someone once said: The most profound scientific discoveries never begin with EUREKA! Usually they start with the words "now that's odd..."
I read the internet for the articles.
Unlikely. If "everything [were to] speed up" that would presumably include us, and hence we wouldn't be able to observe any difference. Plus, if this was happening, it should be more apparent faster moving objects, such as particles whizzing around particle accelerators at relativistic speeds - but it's not.
Sadly, none of us can probably make a useful suggestion on this topic (one that would have eluded all the physicists that have been working on this). Unless the next Einstein is reading Slashdot,we can only make narrow conjectures. How many of us have the knowledge and data required? We might as well try to diagnose a medical condition based on a cursory discussion. It's fun to talk about, though.
One thing you must remember is that this is being published in scientific journals, not just some back page of your local newspaper. If there is one thing scientists do like to perform, is showing that somebody else missed a basic calculation on their raw data like you are suggesting. This is called "peer review", and very common in scientific journals... even if it is more informal than an organized panel. That is in fact why results like this are published in journals like this, so these kind of mistakes can be vetted.
Or more to the point, if you want to make a name for yourself, look through the raw data, perform the calculations yourself, and show what mistake somebody with a PhD did with this sort of data. Many graduate students have indeed gained notice when they have performed exactly these sort of calculations.
Have fun! Seriously, I mean it!
I've seen lots of for-fun gravity sims in which things do get flung around violently, but in most cases only due to error introduced by making necessary approximations (and/or failing to compensate well for them).
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
How do you measure anything when time's stopped for you? Wouldn't the act of measurement require time to pass for you?
No, I haven't forgotten how science works. We've been observing gravity for centuries - we have a highly refined model tested and proven and tested and proven again. For this to be an effect of gravity doesn't mean refining the model - it means tearing it down all the way back to Newton and Galileo.
But understanding that requires not being scientifically illiterate.