ToSeek. Interesting. pete

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

For flybys where the angle is very different for the incoming and outgoing parts of the trajectory – such as the 1998 NEAR flyby – both the formula and the observations give a large anomaly.
Now we are getting somewhere...but I am not sure where. Which vectors were similar - with respect to the sun, or with respect to the equator?

This is an absolute red herring of an explanation, as Anderson has pointed out: The measured acceleration is much more constant than the temperature of the nuclear furnaces on the probes; likewise solar radiation and pressure cannot account for the measurements.

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jwj

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

Yes, I've recently been reading about this. Thanks for bringing up such an interesting topic. I may be interested enough to start posting again on BA.

One thing....where is the formula (equaton) Anderson supposedly came up with that describes the anomalous acceleration in terms of the trajectory's difference in inclination with respect to the planet's equator??

G^2

I agree , Richard.
Unruh-Davies acceleration formula ---> T = (a)(h-bar)/(2pi)(kc).

For 1g acceleration that amounts to a compltetely negligible 10^-20 *K. temperature.

G^2

.

Apparently..... with respect to the planet's equator.


From the article>>>>
"The formula involves the angle that the spacecraft's incoming and outgoing trajectories make with respect to Earth's equator. It accurately predicts the change in speed observed in the flybys so far".

SO WHERE IS THE FORMULA?? I can think for myself.....Just give me the dang formula! ....so I can join in the speculation madness intelligently.

G^2

No, no. Formulas are just for eggheads, you should not expect to see that in a news article. People at large have to be protected from those kinds of influences...

Yes, thanks Ken; how stupid of me ....we certainly don't want to give the 'people at large' something that will give them the ability to think for themselves....
Such a trend could be very dangerous.

G^2

Just think where that could lead. Scary stuff.

ATM

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

I didn't think you're allowed to post complete formulae in the ATM forum.

At least, that appears to be the rule most ATM promoters follow (when they use maths at all...).

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Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
- Goethe

Jump in with both feet!
- Me, indulging my inner eight-year-old

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"Are you a mad-hatter that just types what he wishes, or have you actually any physics training?"
Occam's Ghost to Grant Hutchison.

Let's not disrespect these guys. I disagree with most of their conclusions, but I have to respect some of them for a lot of thought and work, with very little foundation.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Ya, eighteen years tracking flyby gravitations anomalies don't amount to a hill of beans, compared with the centuries we have been taught otherwise.

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jwj

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

Article in The Economist:

Yes, it's an interesting riddle. Although it's a little ironic to see a magazine devoted to economics write about imprecisions in the predictions of astronomers.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Yeah, I know it's been dealt with around here before. The article gives a good summary, though...
Thanks for the link to that other thread

Well, it's not anymore, really.
I think originally (about 150 years ago), it was founded as a magazine about economics (that's where the funny title comes from)
but it's more like a weekly recap of 'what's going on in the world', now.

Pretty good background stories about international politics, business, science...

You're right, The Economist is not a scientific journal. It's more akin to the Wall Street Journal. And naturally economics-minded people have as much right to be curious about astronomy as anyone else.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

I don't like that last paragraph. The lot of us aren't smart enough to figure out what's going on. Sheesh. That last paragraph is pure ATM bait.

But earlier they say:
Funny, it seems to me that there's already hundreds, if not thousands, of these "bored junior Einsteins " happily working in the open on this problem (if even it is one) with their peers.

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The views expressed are the febrile product of an overactive imagination of a person who in shadows sees the gyrating Elvis-like ghost of Leonid Brezhnev.

Gosh I love a good cliffhanger. It will be interesting to see how this whole thing turns out.

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After you take away everything that is impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. ~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes

A new theory of gravity, or of everything, will have to be ATM to start with.

The guy who proposed one recently based upon the largest sporadic group (I forget his name and I forget the terminology, my memory don't work so well these days), well that was an ATM theory coming out of nowhere from an unemployed person. It was treated very politely. Sadly it was proved not to work a little later. But it was treated kindly because it was seen as a potentially good idea, as opposed to off-the-wall arrant nonsense that could never work, which is I think what you are referring to when you say ATM. But ATM does not have to be arrant nonsense.

Well, back then, they also had been working on the problem for decades,
before Einstein finally came up with his theory.

I meant that as a tongue in cheek jab, but not outright disrespect.

It's all in fun.

__________________
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
- Goethe

Jump in with both feet!
- Me, indulging my inner eight-year-old

*** *** ***

"Are you a mad-hatter that just types what he wishes, or have you actually any physics training?"
Occam's Ghost to Grant Hutchison.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

No it won't. The "mainstream" doesn't mean the current predominate theories; it means the accepted process of the practice of science.

No, but it usually is. There's a lot to be said about having hundreds of your peers pouring over your ideas looking for flaws.

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The views expressed are the febrile product of an overactive imagination of a person who in shadows sees the gyrating Elvis-like ghost of Leonid Brezhnev.

"Now that you have identified a problem, and you are certain that the mainstream theory is (explicative, past tense), now you have to start sifting through all of the odd-ball papers and figure out who is on the right track."

Tommy Highsmith

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jwj

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

I agree, thanks!
(just couldn't find the other thread, that's why I started a new one...)

ex·pli·ca·tive (kspl-ktv, k-splk-tv)
adj.
Serving to explain; explanatory.

Expletive, maybe?

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
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"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

There is a Pioneer anomaly because not everything is taken in to account.

The craft accidentally (because of their physical and electronic construction)
produce a small force that is related to frame dragging.
Google EMdrive to see an explanation of the electronic production of this force.
The other part I will reveal after a few experiments if NASA doesn't do it first.
If it was designed to do this it could be a propellant free drive system.
Yes I know,equal and opposite.
The craft goes one way ,the aether and universe go the other way (not much).

The same anomaly has been measured with several very different probes
(different designs, different sizes, different propulsion systems...)
so its not very likely to be a distortion caused by the design...

The Pioneer probes are the only ones that have a clear effect, though. My understanding is that there's some uncertainty in what's been seen with Galileo and Cassini.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

The formula for the flyby anomaly is to be found in March 7th issue of PRL. So far, no one has plopped down the $1300 to make it free to read the 4 page PDF. It may still take a while for it to reach current periodicals, but most university libraries who subscribe also have online access, so waiting is not needed.

Don't expect to find the formula in a normal textbook in spite of its simplicity.
It is not derived from normal physics as we know it yet. Look at it as something captured by an empirical formula that happens to explain the unusual data.

March 2008 may prove to be an interesting month as regards this anomaly. We also have the recent disclosure of an anomaly at Mercury in the Dopplers of MESSENGER, also at closest approach by remarkable coincidence. Later mappings of Mercury's gravity map will show if the initial explanation will hold up. Meanwhile, while there still remains excess hyperbolic velocity, they can check for the anomaly in the next two flybys, again to be compared to eventual gravity maps.

Meanwhile there has been an advance in string theory this month with 3 algebras which may permit a bearing on the flyby anomaly with respect to a parameter from GR. The dipole nature of gravitomagnetism cause the effect to fall off as inverse cubed.

It would be something of a historical deja vu, if via a Mercury study of the flyby anomaly, it was discovered that string theory, which already can derive the GR equations, can make a postdictiction of the flyby anomaly almost one hundred years after Einstein used the perihelion advance of the same planet to make a postdiction supporting General Relativity.