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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!
...the electric universe otaku...
Love the term. Unfortunately, their beliefs, misunderstandings, and actions are not so superficial.
He's sure the most prolific one on Slashdot, though there are a few others who mostly do not seem to be regular readers but who sometimes chime in after he gives them an alert via email or forum post. He's taken a hiatus from Slashdot since early February it seems, but he's been actively recruiting elsewhere. This is from January, but you can see more of his writing here (along with a few transparent astroturfers):
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/11/572421.aspx
During his absence there have been many popular press science articles (pop science press, that is), including several featured on Slashdot, that usually cause that crowd to spring into action. If you're a big enough fan of that noise, try reading thunderbolts.info, a gathering of malcontents and dilettantes the like of which you've probably never seen: at least one of their respected and prolific hierarchy was banned from the abovetopsecret.com forum.
It will show you just how deeply entrenched are
1) their views on what they think is scientific knowledge and valid inductive logic
2) their pathological mistrust of anything that is "mainstream" (seen in many areas other than just what they think is cosmology)
3) their pathological disbelief of relativistic and quantum mechanics, and indeed anything which they do not find in some way "salient" or "reasonable" or "logical".
If you become a regular reader, he will probably think your hit contribution comes from a wave of "grad students". He came up with that idea himself and first asserted it on Thunderbolts or somewhere shortly before this post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=423972&cid=22121930
Debunked in last paragraph of this reply to that post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=423972&cid=22123690
He didn't like that, and repeated it soon after:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22150020
Debunked even further in the last couple paragraphs of this reply to that post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426528&cid=22150550
But he has since repeated it on Thunderbolts.info:
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=13531
Reasoning doesn't seem to work, and even if it ever does I don't think it will be enough to overcome the pathological and entrenched dislike for how the universe actually operates. If you're a casual follower of the EU circle or Velikovskianism, you probably don't know just how deep the popular misunderstanding of science or its subject matter can be. Read on with caution, especially if you have any scientific training (let alone training in physics!); it will depress and/or anger you to see the *explicitly* deliberate propaganda/proselytizing effort on the part of this "otaku" in particular, and the progenitors moreover.
Pseudoscience (and the related, often ironically parroted term by EU-ers of "pseudo-skepticism") are anathema to science and do damage to the acquisition of knowledge, and thereby undermine the improvement of the human condition. Sorry if that sounds melodramatic, but that's the "tangible" effect. It's good for a laugh though, but you have to be good at laughing, and you'll probably get tired of laughing sooner or later.
Here's Ethan Allen's glib but deep (recursive, even!) classic:
"Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason w
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.