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The Pioneer Anomaly
remcook
post Aug 16 2005, 04:27 PM
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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 The Pioneer data exists on a few hundred ancient 7- and 9-track magnetic tapes, which can only be read on "antique" outdated computers.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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The Messenger
post Sep 14 2005, 03:31 PM
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Returning to the Pioneer Anomally:

You may or may not be aware of the curious brightening phenomenon being studied by Ann Verbiscer, per the Planetary Weblog:

QUOTE (Emily L)
"We see three different views of Saturn on different dates. The globe of Saturn hardly looks different at all at these small differences in phase angle. But look at the rings! With the minutest difference in phase angle -- from 0.13 degrees down to 0.02 degrees -- the rings suddenly flash into brilliant light. Anne told me that she saw similar effects on Saturn's icy satellites, especially Enceladus. The size of the opposition surge she saw was "drastically higher, 40% higher, than previously published values."

I'm not an astronomical observer myself so Anne had to explain to me what causes the opposition surge. One explanation is "shadow hiding" -- at any non-zero phase angle, the particles in the rings cast shadows across other particles in the rings, so that darkens the surface. But at zero phase, you see no shadows at all, and the surface looks brighter. But Anne said that "it doesn't work" to explain all of the observed opposition effect. You need something more, like coherent backscatter: that is, constructive interference of the light being reflected from the rings and Enceladus. 


There is an explanation that is consistent, actually a necessary constraint, upon the permeability hypothesis I entered above:

The rings of Saturn, the highly reflective surfaces of some of the moons, are more like mirrors than nominal planetary surfaces. The sunlight reflected by the rings, therefore, more closely resembles a mirrored reflection of the sun, and will return a loosely coherant image of the sun.

When the Earth passes exactly between the Sun and Saturn, the rings and more reflective moons brighten. Why would the reflection be brighter at the very center?

If and ony if there is curvature of space. The image of the sun is focused only at the center, at anyother position of the Earth relative to the sun and Saturn, the image is deconvoluted.

When the Earth is exactly positioned in front of the sun, a perfectly curved lens would return a much brighter reflection of the sun. That is exactly what is happening.

And why would there be curvature? If and only if the permeability of space varies, increasing the speed of light with increasing distance from the center of the solar system, and this would be true if and only if the permeability of space is a function of MASS.

OK, There may be other solutions: Fressnel lensing, for example, but the solution is a lensing solution because the amount of brightening is also a function of wavelength, as would be expected with any single density lensing element.

The curvature has to be very slight...almost undetectable, but not quite, because it produces this brilliant mirror effect exactly in the center - just as a gravitational lens should. But the Earth is too far from the sun to experience this kind of curvature, with GR, as formulated by Einstein, to be the cause. (Also the mass of the Earth is not great enough to cause a GR bending of the light.)

This also explains why there are so many 'Gravitational' lenses, and 'micro quasar' lenses in the galaxy: There is a not-so-new physical principle being manifest: The permeability of space is a function of mass, the speed of light is only a constant in an ideal vacuum that includes the absence of any matter.

Returning to the Pioneer Accelerations, they are an artifact: We use the two-way time and speed of light to determine the distance to the probes. As the speed of light increases at a rate of ~1X10^-9m/s^2, the time it takes light to reach the probes and return is less than if the speed of light were constant. We interpret this as an acceleration of the probes towards the sun, when it is actually a slight acceleration of light away from the sun. (Of course both the speed of light, and the acceleration of the probes are not independently constrained at this time, so the true acceleration of the probes is unknown.) cool.gif
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Guest_Richard Trigaux_*
post Sep 14 2005, 03:46 PM
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Messenger, yes the Earth does have a "gravitationnal lens" effect, but it can significantly concentrates light only at a distance of several thousand light-years. This was put at work in the search of "machos" (massive objects such as blue dwarf stars, planets, brown dwarfs, black holes... explaining the dark matter around the galaxy). But the "machos" detected were very far, for instance in the Magellanic cloud, and the most common mass was around half what of the Sun, much larger than Earth. So I think the effect of gravitationnal lens is undetectable from Saturn. The opposition effect is well explained in terms of shadow hiding and back reflection from ice crystals, an effect we can also see on earth clouds (from above). The best evidence is that it was also photographied by Cassini (see somewhere on Cassini site or on this site) and from here it appears as a bright spot on the rings.
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Posts in this topic
- remcook   The Pioneer Anomaly   Aug 16 2005, 04:27 PM
- - remcook   Some background reading... http://arxiv.org/find/...   Aug 16 2005, 04:40 PM
|- - tedstryk   Won't New Horizons be spin stabilized when not...   Aug 16 2005, 06:53 PM
|- - Jeff7   QUOTE (remcook @ Aug 16 2005, 11:40 AM)Some b...   Aug 17 2005, 07:09 PM
- - remcook   Quote from alan stern: QUOTE Yes, we spin most of...   Aug 16 2005, 07:43 PM
- - Richard Trigaux   Could not the Pioneer tapes be saved on a more mod...   Aug 17 2005, 06:37 AM
- - remcook   QUOTE It looks like the Pioneers have long stopped...   Aug 17 2005, 08:09 PM
- - deglr6328   QUOTE (remcook @ Aug 17 2005, 08:09 PM)that...   Aug 17 2005, 11:10 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (deglr6328 @ Aug 18 2005, 12:10 AM)Not ...   Aug 18 2005, 08:24 AM
- - Richard Trigaux   As far as I understand from readings in the press,...   Aug 18 2005, 06:59 AM
|- - The Messenger   QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Aug 17 2005, 11:59 P...   Aug 26 2005, 09:08 PM
|- - antoniseb   QUOTE (The Messenger @ Aug 26 2005, 04:08 PM)...   Aug 26 2005, 10:42 PM
|- - The Messenger   QUOTE (antoniseb @ Aug 26 2005, 03:42 PM)The ...   Aug 29 2005, 05:25 PM
|- - algorimancer   It seems to me that a simple means of checking thi...   Aug 29 2005, 05:40 PM
|- - The Messenger   QUOTE (algorimancer @ Aug 29 2005, 10:40 AM)I...   Aug 29 2005, 06:12 PM
- - edstrick   Climate orbiter was not radar tracked, it was tran...   Aug 30 2005, 08:52 AM
|- - Mongo   QUOTE (edstrick @ Aug 30 2005, 08:52 AM)There...   Aug 30 2005, 07:12 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   Bill: Your links, er, don't! Bob Shaw   Aug 31 2005, 11:28 AM
|- - Mongo   That's strange; I just clicked on them and the...   Aug 31 2005, 02:45 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (Mongo @ Aug 31 2005, 03:45 PM)That...   Aug 31 2005, 03:42 PM
|- - Mongo   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Aug 31 2005, 03:42 PM)I pro...   Aug 31 2005, 03:57 PM
- - The Messenger   I am at least as interested in the flight path ecc...   Aug 31 2005, 06:56 PM
|- - antoniseb   QUOTE (The Messenger @ Aug 31 2005, 01:56 PM)...   Aug 31 2005, 09:58 PM
- - dvandorn   Hmmm... well, the effect must be very, very minor ...   Aug 31 2005, 07:24 PM
- - Richard Trigaux   Thanks to recent posters this thread took an inter...   Sep 3 2005, 09:07 AM
|- - jamescanvin   QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Sep 3 2005, 07:07 PM...   Sep 5 2005, 12:13 AM
- - Richard Trigaux   A rather interesting prospective explanation of th...   Sep 3 2005, 10:07 AM
- - remcook   some people seem to agree and applied for funding ...   Sep 3 2005, 10:18 AM
- - The Messenger   Richard's proposed test of the Pioneer Anomaly...   Sep 3 2005, 05:00 PM
- - Richard Trigaux   Messenger, my idea was intended to detect a gravi...   Sep 4 2005, 07:03 AM
- - Richard Trigaux   The LISA observatory project will use three test m...   Sep 5 2005, 08:57 AM
- - The Messenger   All of these approaches use assumptions we should ...   Sep 5 2005, 04:28 PM
|- - jamescanvin   Heading off topic but... QUOTE (The Messenger ...   Sep 6 2005, 12:17 AM
|- - The Messenger   QUOTE (jamescanvin @ Sep 5 2005, 05:17 PM)Hea...   Sep 6 2005, 05:53 AM
- - Richard Trigaux   Thanks jamescanvin for the image and the info it c...   Sep 6 2005, 06:37 AM
|- - jamescanvin   QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Sep 6 2005, 04:37 PM...   Sep 7 2005, 12:27 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (jamescanvin @ Sep 7 2005, 12:27 AM)Yes...   Sep 7 2005, 05:42 AM
- - dvandorn   Once again, I'm asking a question that I proba...   Sep 7 2005, 07:36 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Sep 7 2005, 07:36 AM)Does a...   Sep 7 2005, 10:28 AM
|- - The Messenger   QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Sep 7 2005, 03:28 AM...   Sep 8 2005, 06:21 PM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (The Messenger @ Sep 8 2005, 06:21 PM)I...   Sep 9 2005, 07:21 AM
|- - The Messenger   QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Sep 9 2005, 12:21 AM...   Sep 12 2005, 01:49 PM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (The Messenger @ Sep 12 2005, 01:49 PM)...   Sep 12 2005, 02:23 PM
|- - The Messenger   QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Sep 12 2005, 07:23 A...   Sep 12 2005, 06:56 PM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (The Messenger @ Sep 12 2005, 06:56 PM)...   Sep 13 2005, 10:15 AM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Sep 13 2005, 05:15 A...   Sep 13 2005, 01:17 PM
- - edstrick   I'd have to check, but I think the Apollo 17 i...   Sep 7 2005, 08:22 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 7 2005, 09:22 AM)The in...   Sep 7 2005, 09:42 AM
||- - dvandorn   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Sep 7 2005, 04:42 AM)Oooh, ...   Sep 7 2005, 06:33 PM
||- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Sep 7 2005, 07:33 PM)Oh, th...   Sep 7 2005, 08:47 PM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 7 2005, 03:22 AM)I...   Sep 7 2005, 06:41 PM
- - edstrick   When the gravimeter was proposed, selected and des...   Sep 7 2005, 10:38 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 7 2005, 10:38 AM)When t...   Sep 7 2005, 02:38 PM
- - edstrick   "From what I understand, though, even with th...   Sep 8 2005, 10:49 AM
- - edstrick   It has been hoped that cosmic sources of gravitati...   Sep 9 2005, 07:45 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 9 2005, 07:45 AM)As far...   Sep 9 2005, 08:17 AM
- - The Messenger   Suggestions, by anyone, of engineering on this sca...   Sep 13 2005, 04:16 PM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (The Messenger @ Sep 13 2005, 04:16 PM)...   Sep 13 2005, 06:06 PM
- - The Messenger   Returning to the Pioneer Anomally: You may or may...   Sep 14 2005, 03:31 PM
|- - Richard Trigaux   Messenger, yes the Earth does have a "gravita...   Sep 14 2005, 03:46 PM
|- - ljk4-1   http://www.issi.unibe.ch/teams/Pioneer/ The Pione...   Oct 3 2005, 04:46 AM
- - edstrick   ljk4-1: "...The Pioneer Explorer Collaboratio...   Oct 3 2005, 07:15 AM
- - Richard Trigaux   Thanks ljk4-1 for your interesting contribution. A...   Oct 3 2005, 08:15 AM
- - deglr6328   sooooo did the planetary soc. get the data or what...   Oct 3 2005, 09:53 AM
|- - elakdawalla   QUOTE (deglr6328 @ Oct 3 2005, 02:53 AM)soooo...   Nov 10 2005, 01:29 AM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (elakdawalla @ Nov 9 2005, 08:29 PM) We...   Nov 10 2005, 02:33 PM
|- - elakdawalla   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Nov 10 2005, 07:33 AM)De...   Nov 10 2005, 04:46 PM
- - edstrick   <grin> by "anomaly" I mean an ord...   Oct 3 2005, 09:57 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (edstrick @ Oct 3 2005, 09:57 AM)<gr...   Oct 3 2005, 12:40 PM
- - edstrick   Aliens?... I thought it was the CIA and FBI.... or...   Oct 4 2005, 06:27 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (edstrick @ Oct 4 2005, 06:27 AM)Aliens...   Oct 4 2005, 07:37 AM
- - edstrick   You know what the problem is with make-believe par...   Oct 4 2005, 10:51 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (edstrick @ Oct 4 2005, 10:51 AM)You kn...   Oct 4 2005, 04:41 PM
|- - ljk4-1   Astrophysics, abstract astro-ph/0504367 From: Gary...   Oct 4 2005, 07:35 PM
|- - ljk4-1   Paper: astro-ph/0506281 replaced with revised ve...   Oct 26 2005, 02:08 PM
|- - ljk4-1   Paper (*cross-listing*): gr-qc/0511026 Date: Sun...   Nov 9 2005, 04:32 PM
- - Myran   Calculations using the 'MOND' theory (Modi...   Nov 9 2005, 09:10 PM
- - Richard Trigaux   I wonder if we could do any theory of any kind, ad...   Nov 9 2005, 09:21 PM
- - mike   That's what a theory is.   Nov 9 2005, 09:42 PM
- - Myran   QUOTE Richard Trigaux said: I wonder if we could d...   Nov 10 2005, 05:21 AM
- - lyford   Call me old fashioned, but I am a bit wary of jett...   Nov 10 2005, 06:41 AM
|- - The Messenger   QUOTE (lyford @ Nov 9 2005, 11:41 PM)Call me ...   Nov 10 2005, 04:44 PM
|- - lyford   QUOTE (The Messenger @ Nov 10 2005, 08:44 AM)...   Nov 10 2005, 10:06 PM
|- - ljk4-1   Astrophysics, abstract astro-ph/0505310 From: Mic...   Dec 20 2005, 04:05 PM
|- - ljk4-1   General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, abstract...   Jan 3 2006, 02:31 AM
|- - tfisher   I just read through the last paper linked. They...   Jan 3 2006, 07:10 AM
|- - ljk4-1   Paper: astro-ph/0504367 Date (v1): Sun, 17 Apr 20...   Jan 4 2006, 06:18 PM
- - tasp   I bet it is not as simple as this, but I will pos...   Jan 5 2006, 04:14 AM
|- - mchan   QUOTE (tasp @ Jan 4 2006, 08:14 PM)Any possib...   Jan 5 2006, 06:06 AM
|- - ugordan   QUOTE (mchan @ Jan 5 2006, 07:06 AM)One probl...   Jan 5 2006, 08:52 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (ugordan @ Jan 5 2006, 09:52 AM)Wasn...   Jan 5 2006, 01:16 PM
|- - ljk4-1   Can New Horizons participate in this experiment? ...   Jan 5 2006, 02:22 PM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Jan 5 2006, 02:22 PM)Can...   Jan 5 2006, 02:43 PM
|- - ugordan   QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 5 2006, 03:43 PM)That...   Jan 5 2006, 02:50 PM
- - tasp   If an objection to putting a Voyager into a slow s...   Jan 5 2006, 02:45 PM
- - djellison   Damn good point actually UG - hadnt thought of tha...   Jan 5 2006, 02:58 PM
- - ugordan   QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 5 2006, 03:58 PM)Then ...   Jan 5 2006, 03:05 PM
- - NMRguy   QUOTE (Alan Stern @ Feb 23 2005, 09:20 AM)Yes...   Jan 5 2006, 05:19 PM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (NMRguy @ Jan 5 2006, 05:19 PM)Alan add...   Jan 5 2006, 05:56 PM
- - tty   QUOTE (ugordan @ Jan 5 2006, 05:05 PM)Might h...   Jan 5 2006, 06:47 PM
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