This is one of those ironies of the offsetting effects Lunatik pointed out: The entry velocity was greater, which would put Huygens aheard of schedule, the longer braking period necessary to slow Huygens offset the longer breaking period.

A similar thing happened when Cassini swung close to Phoebe -
The differential in the Doppler frequency was greater than expected, but they are writing it off as a radar absorption property...mmm is Phoebe on a stealth mission?

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

The trajectory they chose had a wide margin of error, and the attitude Huygen indexed in at (10-20degrees) was well outside three sigma. How can the attitude be off so bad, and still end up in the projected target? Offsetting effect again, the net vector tails off much quicker once drag becomes a factor.

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Opinion. They say the Doppler data is garbled...I say it is not and they do not believe it.
I have tried, in vain, to create a realistic scenario with the numbers the ESA has released. They have already revised the maximun altitude for that image - (it is in the mosaic that they say ranges from 8-12 km) So the question is how did they come up with the 16.2 km number in the first place? Because in the scientific world, that .2 has a very specific meaning. If it is a mistake, they need to correct it as such, and explain why they made the mistake. I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack, because they are under at least as much pressure as I am - and I am much to unrested not to make more mistakes than usual :x


Since ~ 2001 the papers have been pretty hard on Hipparcos distance data - sorry I don't have time to chase them down, but it you search archives for Hipparcos over the last 4 years you will get the drift. (and have a lot better luck than I did searching for Hippocritus ops: )

I don't know if the systemic navigational errors (many of which have been corrected and led to revised charts) were due primarily gravimetric error, or using single quasars as fixed reference points.

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Fair judgement, and even in this you have expressed an open mindedness. I should be more patient, wait for some better numbers to work with. For now I am just tying up some loose ends and waiting for Friday's press conference :roll:

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Jerry wrote:

I've look everywhere, and could not find any of the changes you mentioned in the height of the pictures in question. Could you please post some links with these changes?

Also, for us that are physics challenged, could you please explain why the '.2 ' is so important to the scientific world?

Jerry,
it would be nice if you addressed this point.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

First, Beagle and all the other Mars probes I made reference to managed to find Mars. Second, they pretty much put Huygens on a beeline for where they knew Titan would be. Third, I predicted a greater mass for Titan, not less. If you throw a ball right for the middle of the strike zone, if you throw a fastball and tails off, it still has a pretty good chance of landing in the catcher mit.
Finally, the ESA has reported the attitude was 10-20%, much greater than predicted, and this is what happened on Mars as well: On both Spirit an and Opportunity the attitude was well beyond three sigma (7deg ~ 0.5deg was predicted with three sigma at ~ 4 deg.)

Oh, and why did Beagle fail and this probe did not? If Beagle would have had a 30 meter parachute, designed to slowly descent while taking data, and road this 30 meter parachute within 100m of the ground, we would have data from Beagle, too. Remember I said if the final, small parachute deployes before Huygens hits the ground, she will fall like a rock. I think if the big parachute was cut at 50 meters instead of 109 kilometers, that is splitting hairs, and my prediction has been realized. The impact crater caused by the heat shield, clearly visible with heat stressed mylar from the thermal blanket painting one side of the crater white, is proof enough.

And we all wonder what happens next.

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Jerry,

If the masses of Mars, Titan, etc. are as radically different as you seem to suggest, then how do the probes make it there at all? A few failures doesn't justify a rewrite of physics especially when there have been so many successes using our current understanding. Is G an unchanging value, that real science suggests, for most of the trip except for a bit at the end where it goes goofy now? Instead of grasping at straws try a few books on physics instead.

Jerry

It is by no means certain that Beagle 2 didn't make a soft landing on Mars. There was no telemetry data transmitted during descent so many things could have gone wrong including a parachute not deploying, or a soft landing on uneven ground that simply toppled the craft. We do not know what happened to Beagle2 because the probe was built on the cheap and vital data was not transmitted, unlike Huygens that was designed specifically to transmit data while descending.

It was probably the hardest lesson the British team learnt during that whole Beagle 2 fiasco.

You muddy the water by continually refering to hypothetical scenarios that have no experimental or factual evidence to back them up.

__________________
By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

OK, assuming for a moment that the above is true:

Why did Huygens enter Titan's atmosphere at the predicted time?

And how did you conclude that the orbital mechanics was wrong?
You have not brought up anything that excludes technical problems (including incomplete knowledge about local atmospheric conditions, that cannot be blamed on fundamental misunderstandings about gravity).

How does this show that the orbital mechanics was wrong?

How does this show that the orbital mechanics was wrong?
Also, why did they get it right in other cases?



(I hear the schreeching noise of nails on a mirror - "climbing mirrors" is the italian phrase for "grasping at straws".)

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

I’m not sure what the answer to this question is, because I don’t know how they are marking the time of entry. I know they are guessing at the landing time, and using this to reconstruct the Doppler record, because they are certain it is corrupt. So they might be tweaking the time of entry for the same reason. Again, I point out they have revised the distance estimates in the photographic record at least twice. Does anyone know if they have provide reasons that the inital numbers were wrong? How did they make these determinations?

In any case, time-of-entry is an ambiguous mark, based upon velocity, gravity, atmospheric density, high altitude wind speed, and temperature.

We are used to thinking of gravity in terms of the inverse square law. It works very well in the earth's environment. because the field strength of the Sun is a virtual constant (G). A perfect analogy is that our planet is near the center of a very powerful electro magnet, and the lines of force are essentially linear in this compact environment. Mars is at the edge of the core, Jupiter much further out and so on. Remember, the field is necessary to move, relative to other objects within the field.

Whenever we tap into the 'inertial' field, the strength is proportional to the cross-sectional area of both the Earth and Sun, and we have not measured the variance or weakening in the the 'inertial field' strength of the sun.

But at the orbit of Saturn the 'solar field effect' is much weaker, decreasing as a log function of distance. So While the total inertial field strength near the earth is dominated by the sun, by the time we get to Saturn, the solar inertial field strength is weak compared to that of the local system. My inability to calculate the density of Saturn makes even two body solutions problematic, especially given all the variables I cited above. In other words, I don’t know. But as long as you keep asking good questions, I will keep trying to answer them

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

It works well beyond that.
Remember Halley's comet?
Do you think the orbit would be elliptical if gravity did not follow the inverse square law?

An electromagnet is a dipole. This is a really bad analogy.
The best analogy is with Coulomb's law.

So, now you have proven that you have no idea what "field" means in physics.

What is this "inertial field"?
Where is the evidence that supports its existence and its properties?

The problem is your inability to understand physics.

All the experimental evidence points towards a constant G.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

For the record, these are Newton's laws of motions, paraphrased for clarity:
Which of these do you agree with, Jerry? It sounds like you have problem with the first one - what about the others?

__________________
"We do not require reality to conform to the expectations of the ignorant"

What it really comes down to is that whenever someone points out information that clearly shows you are wrong, you'll just say that the ESA is lying, guessing or just doesn't know how to interpret their own data.

Which means there's no point in debating.

I think it's really time for everyone to stop giving Jerry attention.

Jerry, one last try.

Latest data from ESA

Please click link, read and digest the information given then come back with a sensible reply (like: "Sorry for wasting your time guys, I got it all wrong").

Deliberately ignoring factual information and hand waving nonsense because you don't have even a tenous grasp of very basic mechanics is not only insulting to all the people who have been patient with you through 3 or more threads spanning at least 30 pages but against the rules of this board.

My own patience is now exhausted and I'm about ready to call TROLL

__________________
By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

Trouble is, it would be much easier to ignore this, and in particular the implications... :-#

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing ever happened." Winston Churchill

Which one of you has the cite for the paper or article that definitively eliminated all of the other possible reasons for the anamoly? You must have see it to claim (and agree) the sole reason for the anamoly is the failure of Newtonian gravity and ignoring the other possibilities.

__________________
Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

Neptune- The original Dark Matter.

The author feels that this technique of deliberately lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. - Donald Knuth

Modern physics throw a few caveats into Newton's laws. Force often leads to radiation rather than motion. Most of my interpretations rely upon the fact mass and energy are interchangeable, or more precisely, there is precious little difference between radiation and matter – Thank you, Albert Einstein, you got that part right for us.

Impatiently waiting for descent profile information, and trying to make sense of what has been released:

http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/h...ults_0121.html

Are you guys ok with contradictive statements like that? I don't know what to do with it. One GCMS sample three inches into a sandy surface does not a planet make. Could one draw the same conclusion, if no argon was detected in a sand dune on Earth? Who is making statement like that, and what does it mean?

We also learned the Ground Radar did not acquire a useful signal until 40 km, according to the flight plan that’s 20 minutes and 100 km late. Why was that? We have radar on Titan from the Earth for pete's sake. Put that inept of radar on an airplane, and none of us would fly. Or was the ground radar perfectly functionary, but was not deployed until ~ 40 km?

We have been grinding away at rocks on Mars to find out what they are made out of, how can we look at one on Titan and say it is a dirty snowball? Its a rock. No one knows what is inside it. Bad Astronomy!

The surface is like sand, so the rocks are like snowballs? Somebody fill me in, because the logic is evading me.

We have about two of the expected 15 sets of atmospheric panoramics – where are the other 13? The images were suppose to be divided between both channels so we should have at least six. The two sets we have contain a lot of blurry images, and the range of altitudes on the ESA's descent is awful high between each image. Why?

I am still of the opinion this was the most fantastic voyage of all time. If anyone can fill in some blanks for me, I would appreciate it: Accelerometer profile, descent trajectory, pressure profile, mach numbers, Radar altitude verses time. What were the descent rates on the main and final parachutes? We have been told the descent rate reduced to ~50m/s on the main parachute, What was the terminal velocity, and at what altitude? Why were the attitudes so high? There are a few hard numbers that would allow me to sleep much better at night.

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Jerry

I refer you to your opening post on this thread and also the fact that the mission was a success using applied mainstream theory.

Goalpost shifting, hand waving, asking for more information without doing any basic research yourself and deprecating both NASA and EAS personell in an effort to justify your discredited speculation is trollish behavior. Some of your questions have already been answered on your other thread but so far you have not replied to the folk who have given you that courtesy. You are the one with the alternative wild imaginings, it's up to you to provide factual evidence to support those imaginings. Your opening post prediction failed, your ship has blown itself clear out of the water and you don't have a log left to cling to.

I now believe your behavior to be willfull and I'm calling it such.

Goodbye.

__________________
By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

No one is more proud of NASA and the ESA, and of Huygens than I am. I even empathized with their befuddled treatment of the data. Huygens is an unqualified technological achievement.

In the first post, I showed how I predicted the density of Titan is more than double the 1.88g/cc in the textbook, and that Huygens was in grave danger. After that posting, it was pointed out that NASA heat shields never fail, the main parachute was set to deploy at a MACH number, not a time, and both of these factors improved Huygens odds of survival.

I was very adamant that if the mission succeeded, it would be clear in the descent profile whether or not my prediction has been fulfilled. We have not been given a descent profile based upon actual data. The jury is still out.

If it took longer than expected for Huygens to slow down to Mach 1.5, we do not know, and may never know. Because we have been told the Doppler data gathered from two “highly stable” oscillators transmitting to Cassini has been lost. Without the Doppler data, no one knows when or at what altitude the small parachute (that would have doomed Huygens if it had deployed at the advertised high altitude, if I am correct) deployed.

We do know Huygens was much warmer during the descent than expected, and that the attitude was cocked ‘about’ 10 degrees more than expected. This data is consistent with a longer than expected deceleration to MACH 1.5, a rapid descent on a 30 meter parachute to a low fairly low altitude, followed by one minutes worth of confusing images at very low altitude of a heat shield hitting the moon, fracturing a brittle surface, and leaving the pattern of an http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-...6U71Y3E_0.html arrow shape (lower right) at the end of an electronics harness in the char, an arrow head that can be clearly identified at the very bottom of this http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraf...raft-litho.jpg image (very bottom) of Huygens during final installation on Cassini. It is the right shape, it is the correct size, relative to the size of the heat shield crater, and the spaghetti image extending to the arrow is much more consistent with the char patterns I have seen in burned wiring harnesses I have seen under the bonnet of a auto than in any cloud formation.

I don’t know how you can lose the Doppler carrier frequency of information and still get the information carried on the frequency. The images we see are proof the carrier signal was alive and well when it arrived on Cassini. How did the Doppler get lost, and even if it did, since the transfer rates and data timing packages should be known, why can’t it be recreated? It can’t be reconstructed for one reason: There is no physical model for what the scientists are looking at, so they must conclude the data is corrupt.

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

This is disingenuous. You keep repeating how great the mission was, but continue to denigrate the people involved with collecting and interpreting the data.

We know enough about the descent to show your fantasies have no basis in reality. From here:

You'll notice this timeline doesn't support your assertions.

Talk about being befuddled! The ultra-stable oscillators were for the Doppler Wind Experiment, not for determing altitude.

From here:

The data was lost because Channel A on Cassini was not command on. This was the only channel with the USO. The DWE data was only sent on Channel A.

If you bothered to read or listen to the ESA scientists, you would know that they believe they can reconstruct this data from the signals received and recorded at over 18 Earth-based radio telescopes.

Pure speculation and completely wrong! So the scientists you say you're so proud of are now perpetrating a lie?

It's this type of two-faced behavior that hasn't won you many friends here.

__________________
"A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent." -- Elbert Hubbard

I'm just waiting for the response to that time line to be something to the effect of "...but, that's just what they're telling us."

:roll:

__________________

Feynman
>~~~~<
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Quite the contrary! Completely contrary =D> I should have picked up on this before Look at this:


According to your table, it took 268 second - four minutes and twenty eight seconds to slow down from a predicted velocity of 6km/s to 400m/s, not “less than three minutes”. That is at least 128 more seconds deceleration above MACH 1.5 and that is HUGH! This throws the observed deceleration rate off by a factor greater than two! Instead of decelerating at ~16m/s^2, the rate had to be less than 8 m/s^2. This means either the atmosphere was much thinner than calculated, or the drag of the parachute was much less than expected, or the acceleration due to gravity was more than twice what was expected.

Remember, this is exactly what happened with both Viking missions, the Pathfinder, Mar 3, and both Spirit and Opportunity: The descent rates through the Martian atmosphere were much greater than expected, This is also what happened to the Galileo probe – they had to model a down draft of over 200m/s to explain the acceleration.

It also can be reasonably deduced from these numbers that MACH 1.5 was not achieved until a much lower altitude than expected. Your chart does not give us the altitudes, or when the main parachute was cut, or when the heat shield released. So every number in that table could be correct, Huygens easily could have drifted under both parachutes at low altitudes for hours.

No! When a scientist compares the data in hand with hard theory and the numbers do not match, the data is always suspect, but not fundamental theory.

This is not an accusation of a lie, but an affirmation that the scientists involved are using correct scientific methodology. No one, except for me, thinks new physics is involved. You are absolutely correct that it would be incongruous of me to accuse ESA scientist of not acting in good faith. I did state such in a prior post, and I was wrong. I apologised

They are interpreting the data in the only meaningful way within the known laws of physics, as they should. They have told us all the Doppler data received from Cassini is useless. This may or may not be true, if the numbers are looked at using new physics, but that is not one of the options a reasonable scientists allows.

Actually, the ultra stable oscillator was suppose to provide a hard reference for both the wind Doppler and primary transmitter carrier frequency, which in turn was to be used for altitude and velocity determinations.
Notice that they said they could used either Cassini’s or Huygens’ ultra stable oscillators for calibrating channel A, but neither circuit was available for calibration of channel B.

This is a rather puzzling application of redundancy: If Channel A fails, you throw out half the science, because not only is a reference frequency necessary for calibrating the Doppler wind expirement, altitude and descent rates; these numbers are necessary to calibrate the atmospheric densities, and the frequency shifts have to be bumped up against the accelerometers to disentangle atmospheric from gravitational effects. Bummer. I was hoping this mission would be definitive

Of course we still have the ground based Doppler data, but if it looks like I think it looks, no one will believe it. Why should they?

Using ESAs numbers for entry altitude(1,270,000m), velocity (6,000m/s), and Parachute deployment altitude (160,000m), and Mach 1.5 velocity (400m/s) and assuming a near constant deceleration, this should have taken ~ 153 seconds. 268 seconds between atmospheric entry and main parachute deployment means something very different happened.

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Now, Jerry...Hugh hasn't bothered anybody...why bring him into this discussion?

Holy crap, you took a leap right off the proverbial deep end here.

1) That was an educated guess based on what they believed they knew about Titan's atmosphere. Meaning, given atmospheric altitude X, atmospheric density Y, and entry velocity Z, you get an approximate deceleration time of three minutes or so.

2) "Pre-programed sequence", the meaning of these words are obviously lost on you. Four minutes and twenty eight seconds sounds like they gave themselves a buffer. A minute in free fall at Mach 1 in an atmosphere several times deeper than Earth's would hardly be a threat to the mission. That chute was designated to open on a timer that was triggered by the wake up call. It gave the probe plenty of time to complete the projected entry through what on an Earth atmospheric entry would be the black out period.

As for other probes experiencing variations in the projected decel times, I remind you that atmospheres are not static entities. High and low pressure systems affect density, temperature varations affect density, even wind current affect density. Its a chaotic system, entry programs are written to the median with enough flexibility to account for local variations.

Its like black out periods on spacecraft entering Earth's atmosphere, no two are every completely the same. If you have enough data points you can make an educated guess within a +/- range, but that's a LONG way from knowing to the second how long it takes to decelerate.

Aside from some information gained through observations, they had no real clue what entering Titan's atmosphere would be like. They assembled the best model possible, deduced an average time and added extra time for chute deployment outside the projected deceleration window as a safety margin.

__________________
The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

The timeline predicted in advance at the ESA site (adjusted CET Earth-received times there to UTC event at Titan):

Jerry, help. I'm having a little trouble, here. Where is the vast discrepancy between the predicted times of events and the actual?

__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

They aren't interpreting Doppler data since they didn't receive any because Channel A was not engaged on Cassini. They didn't say the data was useless, they said they didn't receive it. You can bluster all you want about "new physics", but without data it doesn't mean a thing.

Your trying to paint the picture of scientists squelching uncomfortable data when in fact the data was never there to analyze. This is another example of you impugning the Huygens scientists without justification.

There was one TUSO on Huygens that transmitted on Channel A. There was one RUSO on Cassini that received on Channel A. Channel A on Cassini was not enabled, so the data from Huygens was never recorded.

Notice that the TUSO and RUSO are connected to only one chain. If one part of the chain fails, the data is lost. That is the crux of the matter.

They didn't lose half the science! Only the DWE experiment data and about half of the images. The other science data was replicated on both channels.

If the data can be reconstructed from what was received at the various radio telescopes, then why shouldn't we believed them? Because you say so?

__________________
"A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent." -- Elbert Hubbard

Jerry wrote:
The only data lost was the doppler date for wind experiments. Other than that, channel A = CHannel B. All data was recovered.

This has been explained to you before. Please stop repeating out of context content. The doppler data lived on Channel A only. It had no effect
on the other experiments.

And please explain why we have to bump up the frequency against the accelerometers?

And the mission was more than definitive. Huygens just didn't do what you claimed it would do, many months ago. So now we make things up.

Not that it affects your overall argument, but about half the photos were lost as well because they were transmitted only over Channel A.

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.