The Pioneer Anomaly |
The Pioneer Anomaly |
Aug 16 2005, 04:27 PM
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Rover Driver Group: Members Posts: 1015 Joined: 4-March 04 Member No.: 47 |
http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/pioneer_anomaly_faq.html
The planetary society may be checking it out... QUOTE The Planetary Society has committed to raise the funds to preserve the priceless Pioneer data from destruction.
After years of analysis, but without a final conclusion, NASA, astonishingly, gave up trying to solve the "Pioneer Anomaly" and provided no funds to analyze the data. The Pioneer data exists on a few hundred ancient 7- and 9-track magnetic tapes, which can only be read on "antique" outdated computers. The agency is going to scrap, literally demolish, the only computers able to access and process that data in the next few months! |
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Guest_Richard Trigaux_* |
Aug 18 2005, 06:59 AM
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Guests |
As far as I understand from readings in the press, the Pioneer probes (ant others) would slow down slighty more than expected from only the Sun gravity. This led to some interesting but far reached speculations.
Some asked if the gravity law was not exactly 1/R2. The most consistent speculation is that, like the galaxy shows an excess (sometimes ten times) of invisible mass, called dark matter, the solar system may have some too (although much less, a fraction of a %). From close to the Sun, we feel only the Sun's attraction, but further in space we feel the Sun's more the dark matter's attraction. This could be explained if the dark matter is made of low energy subatomic particles; many would orbit the galaxy, with speeds in the 200km/s range. Some would orbit the Sun with still smaller speeds in the km/s range. But the measurement of the anomaly is based on many far-reached and difficult estimates, such as the toss of sun's light on the space probe, or gaz leak from the reservoirs. A slight error or false assumption, and the result would be very different. This is why the Pioneer anomaly did not upset the science community. A precise measurement of this anomaly would perhaps do. |
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