Yes, In Against the Mainstream we are discussing theory, and that is good, in this thread I am soliciting evidence, pro and con, As detailed as possible. So far, the comments are helpful.

A decrease in the ‘inertial capacity’ of the system leads to an underestimate of mass. Let me use electronics to illustrate the concept: I can hang my Christmas lights up on any house in the valley and get a good estimate of the distance from the luminosity. But if I plugged them into my house and ran a long extension cord, my estimate would be way off if I did not include the line loss in the calculation. When we launch a probe away from the Sun, As the mass of the system decreases, so does the apparent mass of the rocket. No, this is not Newton and Einstein, and we know it.

I am hypothesizing the equivalence principle is wrong: Inertia is not intrinsic in matter but a function of the total electromagnetic mass. Energy is conserved because the momentum lost is literally radiated. All of the space probes arriving at destinations further from the sun contain less kinetic energy, and this 'line loss' is proportional, as a log function of the distance traveled. The only time this effect is obvious is in carefully monitored probes like the pioneer 10 and 11.

Yes it does, and in a Mendellian way it certainly is. Let me fix that. I have only demonstrated the principle with the variation due to increasing distance from the Sun. Let’s look more closely at how the masses of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus were determined:

They flew the Pioneer & Voyager missions very close to the moons of these planets, then they used the acceleration of these moons to estimate the masses of the rest of the Saturn system. The same error that causes the masses to be underestimated relative to the sun, is multiplied when this solar density is used to calculated densities within the Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and Jupiter systems:

If I assume they used the perpetuations of Titan and Phoebe to determine the masses of the outer moons of Saturn, and the perpetuations of Titan to calculate the masses of the inner moons and of Saturn itself, and correct for a ‘G’ factor that is proportional to the orbital distances,
look what happens to the densities:

...................................Distance......S olar........Saturn......"Titan"...
.................."Official"....From.......Distanc e......Orbit........Distance....
Spheroid.....Density......Titan........Density.... Distance......Density.....

Saturn............0.64.........-5.15..........2.75...........0.00...........3.54.. .....

Dione.............1.43.........-4.03..........3.36...........1.12...........4.79.. .....
Rhea..............1.33.........-3.62..........3.13...........1.53...........3.48.. .....
Titan..............1.88..........0.00...........4. 42...........5.15...........4.42......

....................................Distance...... Solar........Saturn......"Pheobe"....
.................."Official"....From.......Distanc e......Orbit.........Distance....
Spheroid.....Density......Pheobe........Density... .Distance......Density.....

Promtheus......0.70........12804........1.65...... ....139.40.........3.16.....
Pandora..........0.70........12802........1.65.... ......141.70 .........3.15.....
Epimetheus.....0.70........12792........1.65...... ....151.40.........3.11.....
Janus..............0.67........12792........1.58.. ........151.50.........2.98.....
Mimas.............1.17........12758........2.75... .......185.60.........4.98.....
Encleladus.......1.24........12706........2.92.... ......238.10.........5.04.....
Tethys.............1.21........12649........2.85.. ........294.70.........4.73.....
Hyperion..........1.40........11480........3.29... .....1464.10.........4.22.....
Phoebe............1.60...........0.0........3.76.. ....12944.30.........3.76.....

I caution these are only gross approximations, they certainly used all the ‘good’ ranging data from several missions to calculate the masses, not just these two moons, but it illustrates the point. Someone who knows exactly how the masses of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto were determined should know in a heartbeat whether or not the composite data will support this hypothesis. These numbers are too close to laugh off without a serious comparison with hard data.

Just as important, look at what happens with Saturn: Without these corrections, the density of the outer moons is somewhat directly proportional to the distance from the planet, just opposite the solar system. Why would this be? Any argument used to justify the fact that the density distribution of the solar system decreases with increasing distance from the Sun, is contraindicated in this oddness in Saturn system. On the other hand, if we are systemically omitting a needed term in our gravimetric determinations, a near constant density for the solar system emerges.

I agree, there are too may exceptions in the original post, but once I realized how the mass of Saturn was determined (I think) the entire Saturn sub-planet system falls into line reasonably well.

Sure it is. Yes, radar imaging has improved, but you can’t tell me we couldn’t nail an orbital period any better than 1% with Voyager or Pioneer data, and in the same breath tell me the same data can be accurately used to calculate the masses of the moons and planets! This is exactly the scale of error we are looking at in the Pioneer anomally.

True for big planets, not for little ones. Phoebe and many of the other moons of Saturn are not round. There is not enough gravitational energy to shape them. Phoebe is pockmarked with craters, indicating, unless you are a NWC, a great deal of age. If Phoebe were made out of Ice, one high velocity zap from anything bigger than a bagel would pulverize it. Molecular bonding as we know it? Or some unknown icey Saturn glue?

Much of this is speculation, based upon the data from the inner stellar probes: before the fly byes, we had every reason to believe Neptune was not very different from inner planets. The moons of Neptune don’t look like hydrogen and ammonia, and they hardly could be, but they have nearly the same density as Neptune. Geophysicists are at a complete loss to explain Europia. A better interpretation of what we see is that 1% error in the orbital rotation of Saturn is real and we don’t know the true accelerations of the probes near the great planets. I really think Cassini will help straighten this all out, but only if we look at the data with fewer preconceptions.

Again, this interpretation is based upon the mass calculations. The theory that there is no iron core is based upon the assumption an iron core always creates a linear magnetic field – there currently no consensus model that assigns causality to this prediction. Mars definitely has an Iron core, but an extremely weak magnetic field.

This is one case where the chemists should be shaking the astro-geophysicists by the collar and running some sanity checks! Liquid nitrogen does not erupt and solidify into visible flows. Water would not flow from a liquid nitrogen volcano either. These scenarios are like climbing up a glacier and expecting to find a volcano cone.


No, but the last website I visited on the subject was 8) .

Not in Hawaii… ops: (sunburn)

This is a subtle effect – once orbit is achieved, there should be no problems. It took them more than 300 maneuvers to get surveyor into position...or was that

Gad! I posted draft 2!, draft three was much less dyslexic – my secretary said I could blame her, but the handywork was my own. I’ll post an edit. Sarcasm aside, the comments are useful. Thanks for the links.

Dysfunctional landing pads is just the kind of thing I am looking for! Do they know the rockets shut down before it hit, or is this just a guess because they know it hit too hard? How do we know the craft was not accelerating much faster than planned, and this created enough resistive air flow to trip the pad sensors?

There was a Russian Mars lander forty years ago that transmitted about twenty seconds worth of data after landing. All they know is it landed, and landed hard.

Me too. The jury is still out on Bode's law and frankly, I do think it is a function of resonant effects not so different from the weaving in the rings of saturn.

Edit: replaced meaningless distance row with 'distance from Pheobe' used in the calculations.

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jwj

If you always believe what you already know, you can't learn anything - Liz