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 The Pioneer data exists on a few hundred ancient 7- and 9-track magnetic tapes, which can only be read on "antique" outdated computers.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_* |
Sep 3 2005, 10:07 AM
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Guests |
A rather interesting prospective explanation of the Pioneer anomaly could come from a completelly different field, from the exploration of the cosmic background radiation at 3°K by COBE and WMAP.
These two probes found results which strinkingly match the predictions of the standard cosmologic inflation theory in the very early stages of the universe, excep for some points. Here is a paper on this: Cosmic Symphony (I did not read it, I read the french publication in the science review "Pour la Science", french edition of the Scientific American). Among the possible explanations on these discrepancies was evoked the possibility of a cloud of matter (dust or neutral gas) near the solar system or in orbit around it. Such a cloud would be essentially of a very low density, and thus very transparent at any wavelengh. It would emit/absorb only radiations matching its black body temperature, which is, for a free body in far space, at equilibrium with the cosmic background! This would explain that such a cloud was never detected before: only a precise measurement of the cosmic background could allow for its discovery. If such a cloud exists, its very low density multiplied by its huge dimentions would lead to a sizeable mass, more than a planet, and even in the order of a star mass. This would perfectly explain the Pioneer anomaly, and even the variations found on this effect (at times toward the Sun, at times opposite) according if the probe goes toward the cloud or in another direction. Eventually a Pioneer effect probe becomes more interesting. |
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