"Pioneer Anomaly"

[Petey of Lone Tree]

The website "The Planetary Society" at http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/innovative_technologies/pioneer_anomaly/ has the following article which might be of interest:

Something strange is happening in the outer reaches of our solar system. The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft are not where they are supposed to be. These missions, launched in 1972 and 1973, have covered hundreds of millions of kilometers, heading toward the edge of our solar system. But something is holding them back. Each year, they fall behind in their projected travel by about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles).

Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist John Anderson and his colleagues have been searching for an explanation since 1980. But as of yet, they have found nothing conclusive; no spacecraft behavior or previously unknown property of the outer solar system can explain the deceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft. Scientists are being forced to consider the unthinkable: something may be wrong with our understanding of the laws of physics. An important line of inquiry will be to study mounds of Doppler (velocity) data and spacecraft status data (like temperatures) that have been unavailable to researchers—but that is about to change.

The Planetary Society, using support from its members, is currently sponsoring the recovery of Doppler and spacecraft status data, as well as analysis of that data. NASA was not ready to allocate resources to recover the Pioneer data, or sponsor its analysis. Anderson and his colleague Slava Turyshev, contacted The Planetary Society for help, requesting funds to support the use of the antiquated computers to read out the pre-1987 Pioneer tapes and convert them to a format useable by researchers. And, they sought funding to seek additional sources of Pioneer data, and to support analyses of the data. The Planetary Society sent an appeal to members to help save the data from destruction and then support the complex analyses necessary to solve the mystery. Our members and supporters responded with unprecedented enthusiasm.

The process was started, and is going very well. The data are successfully being recovered and saved. They will be made available for other researchers as well, and analysis will be starting soon. In our updates section, you can learn more. Only about 11 years of data had been analyzed in detail before. We have now recovered data covering nearly 30 years to help solve the mystery, in addition to recovering never before analyzed spacecraft status data that will be valuable in assessing possible spacecraft influences on the anomaly.

Whether it turns out to be an annoying spacecraft effect or a revolution in physics, the Pioneer Anomaly is a mystery that must be solved as we continue to explore the universe around us.

 

[arkmod]

Perhaps the explanation is already known in ceretain circles? See e.g.

...The detection of absolute motion is not a return to Newtonian physics, but it does invalidate Einstein's postulate about the invariance of the speed of light. We now understand, as of 2002, that this postulate was always in disagreement with experiment. What is emerging as the correct theory is essentially a neo-Lorentzian relativity, which predated Einstein's 1905 work. Then it is possible, for example, to write Maxwell's equations in a form that clearly separates the various physics involved. The original and usual covariant form of Maxwell's equations actually melds two different phenomena in such a way that neither is now clearly revealed. The major development is that the whole spacetime ontology, both flat and curved, was a house of cards, held up mainly by misunderstandings. It has now crumbled....

More: http://destinymatrix.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_archive.html

Perhaps the clue is also here: :)

96-11-30

Q: (Jan) We already did that, I already did the graphics for
the ones we asked about last time. I have a whole file
with nothing but crop circles. Didn't you send that to him?
That's what we're talking about. We need other
pictograms to ask about. (T) Oh, I know what we need. It's
not just pictures of crop circles, we need the dimensions of
the crop circles as well. You can't do anything mathwise if
you don't know how big or whatever. (Ark) If Einstein's
relativity is only partly correct, as pointed
out last time, and this is because of the variable 'time',
does this imply that the theory of relativity based on
Galilei group is better than that based on Lorentz group?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Why?
A: Because of the symmetric calculations they used as a basis
for their efforts.
Q: (T) Where has the Lorentz group gone wrong?
A: Too complex to answer.

 

[John G]

Instead of saying too complex, the Cs should have at least provided links to those conformal papers you and Coquereaux wrote in the early 90s :)

 

[ark]

It's somewhat more complex than that. In fact, it is even more complex than all I know today.

Sometimes a difficult problem can be solved by lifting into a higher-dimensional space --- generalizing, adding complexity, transforming, and then simplifying back at the end. This is a strikingly counterintuitive approach. Are we not seeking to reduce complexity? But lifting can work wonders when our original challenge is solvable only in an extremely subtle and non-obvious way, because it's a special case of a much larger problem --- a larger problem that has more structure and therefore more handles to get a grip on.

Think about the shadow cast by a moving three-dimensional object with a complicated shape. It could be almost impossible to predict the changes of that shadow, if we are only allowed to observe and think about the shadow itself. But if we can figure out the shape of the real object from evidence that the shadow provides us, then the problem to understand the shadow's motions becomes simpler.

The big magic happens when we realize that, for many complicated tasks, there need not be a unique "real object" at all --- and that the "shadow problem" we must solve can be extended into higher dimensional spaces in many different ways. So we can choose a lifting strategy deliberately to make our shadow problem turn into something easier to solve. We thus take advantage of the freedom that comes from going to a richer space of possibilities.

This method of "lifting" applies to numerous mathematical puzzles, and analogous ideas can be used on challenges in other areas of life. Often our struggles can be eased if we see them as special cases within larger situations --- and if we can escape from our immediate contexts to view ourselves in that larger universe....

http://zhurnal.net/ww/zw?SimplifyingThroughComplexity

:)

 

[John G]

I personally can't tell a Galilei from a Poincare from a deSitter (or is it anti-deSitter) but apparently they can slide back and forth in between a Minkowski space and a conformal cone-space depending on the value of the "local" cosmological constant. Why earth has a zero local cosmological constant and Pioneer has something more non-zero sounds more than a bit messy but I think Jack and Tony have the idea that the conformal degrees of freedom get randomized out in the presence of lots of ordinary matter along the lines of how magnetized iron gets not magnetized.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1059635#post1059635