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Originally Posted by korjik
Just saying that your daughter showed you two balloons that could charge off of one another dosent mean that all of electrostatics must be thrown out.
It means that there is something there that you don't know
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Try rubbing two balloons together, them stick them on the wall, without rubbing them any further. Then try sticking them on the wall without rubbing them together at all . I am a physcist, I can't explain why they stick after being rubbed together, without some rather feeble mumbling about statistical variations and quantum effects. Explain how thunderstorms emit gamma rays. Explain static friction. I don't think that the standard explanations for triboelectric effects are correct - they don't answer enough questions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by korjik
Why? If you have a model of what happens, you should be able to figure how it would affect Hipparcos and see if your model causes better fits. That looks more like a grad student with supercomputer time than a huge collaboration.
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Have you listened to Planetary Radio's interview with John Anderson on the flyby data?
http://www.planetary.org/radio/show/00000279/
Anderson & company spent years analysing Earth fly-by data - starting with flyby analysis in 1990. Cassini, Near, Galileo and Rosetta; and the analytical teams included the best planetary navigators in the US and Europe. They did not come up with a formula until about a year ago, and they still do not have any physics to explain why the formula works. (I haven't seen the formula yet.) In the 2006 paper, Anderson states that even with five missions worth of data, they can't isolate whether the anomaly - they don't know if it is due to a change in the Doppler rate (the speed of light), or the velocity of the probe. My working theory says both, but I can't decouple them either - there is not enough well-quantified evidence; and until probes are launched that test fundamental principles, I don't think anything will be settled.
The orbital calculation of Hipparcos is much more complex than these rather simple (coasting) flybys: Everytime the probe is reoriented by any method for any reason, the numbers change. I think I read they had to use 20+ term harmonics to settle down the observed parallax to quantifiable numbers. That is a lot of number crunching for one malnourished grad student.
As we all know, very close to the Earth, gravity is very nearly exactly as predicted by both Newton and Einstein. There are more fertile places to look: Cassini will be returning A LOT of anomalous data; generally interpretable as extreme over-densities near the crust; exaggerated near mountains on closest passes. (The mountains of Iapetus will map as extremely dense.)
I have been predicting gravitational anomalies during flyby's since long before Anderson's paper, (
Another test of Non-Newtonian Physics ) I'm absolutely certain that the teams who are trying to interpret Doppler signals from Cassini are very puzzled - and it may be a while before anything is published - I hope not sixteen years. There are more gravitational flyby's scheduled during the follow up mission.
In Anderson's paper he mentions that he is making the equation available, so that others who are investigating gravitational anomalies will have access to it. I suspect he is aware of the discussion on this board. It may not be the best science forum, but it is the best I have found for sharing screwball ideas...even with turkey timer.