Mystery in Space
Something strange is happening to our probes as they reach the limits of our solar system.
Something strange is happening in the outer reaches of our solar system. The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft are not where they are supposed to be. These missions, launched in 1972 and 1973, have covered hundreds of millions of kilometers, heading toward the edge of our solar system. But something is holding them back. Each year, they fall behind in their projected travel by about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles).
Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist John Anderson and his colleagues have been searching for an explanation since 1980. But as of yet, they have found nothing conclusive; no spacecraft behavior or previously unknown property of the outer solar system can explain the deceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft. Scientists are being forced to consider the unthinkable: something may be wrong with our understanding of the laws of physics. An important line of inquiry will be to study mounds of Doppler (velocity) data and spacecraft status data (like temperatures) that have been unavailable to researchers—but that is about to change.
It’s either a case of physics, where we’ve finally stumbled into the situation that disproves held theory, or there’s something (or combination of somethings) that have acted on the probes to alter their speed and direction.
That could be as simple as an as-yet unknown mass imparting some force, much like the gravitational ‘bounces’ we’ve started using for probes, or something less obvious - a stream of particles along the lines of the solar wind.
Posted by Bob on 01/30 at 10:15 AMI suspect it’s either low albedo planetoids or dark matter.
Posted by on 01/30 at 12:39 PMPlanetoids have low libido? (Maybe I misread that.)
Posted by Bob on 02/03 at 01:38 PMDefinition of Albedo
A low albedo object is invisible or almost invisible from earth that far away
Posted by on 02/03 at 04:24 PM
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