Pioneer 11 Anomaly Related To "New" Physics?

Posted Aug 18, 2006 at 5:36AM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: Tags: California, JPL, Jupiter, NASA, Saturn

Twenty years ago, NASA researchers noticed something odd about the Pioneer 10 & 11 space probes as they approached opposite edges of the solar system. For some reason, they were experiencing a larger-than-expected rate of deceleration. The slowing effects were observed until scientists lost contact with the probes in the 1990s. This information was made public eight years ago by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.

Since then, similar unexplained speed changes have been observed in other space probes. In some cases, this was unexpected increase in speed - for example, NASA's NEAR spacecraft recently flew near the Earth traveling 13 millimeters faster than expected - too large for it to have been a simple error in calculations.

John Anderson of the Global Aerospace Corporation in Altadena, California, believes both effects are related to fly-bys of planetary bodies. Pioneer 11's odd acceleration pattern, for example, seems to have started shortly after its fly-by of Saturn in September 1979. Currently, data archives of Pioneer 10 are being examined to determine if its unusual deceleration started when it buzzed by Jupiter.

It's possible that ordinary physics may be involved here, but some scientists believe that something more exotic could be in action. It might it be that mysterious "dark matter" we've heard so much about lately, or are the laws of gravity different that what we thought they were? "We're just throwing it out as a possibility that the anomalies might have a single cause," according to Anderson. "We thought it was really time to get the community thinking about it."

JPL's Peter Antreasian thinks that laws of gravity and physics may need rewriting. He doesn't see a connection between the NEAR phenomenon and the Pioneer anomaly, since the force behind it always points Sunward. In the case of the NEAR fly-by, he says "a directional force such as the Pioneer anomalous force would have been very evident in the radiometric data in the last few days before the approach." The cause of this anomaly apparently makes its impact just before the closest approach to Earth, he added.

Other scientists, like Myles Standish, thinks Antreasian and Anderson are complicating the issue unnecessarily. Standish calculates trajectories of solar system bodies for JPL. He thinks that these odd changes in speed are indeed the result of error. "It's like a farmer in Louisiana seeing a light in the sky and immediately screaming 'UFO!', whereas it could be a number of other things," he says.

Via New Scientist

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Pioneer 11 Anomaly Related To "New" Physics?

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