• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Something new under the sun

sol invictus said:
The electric sun is just some idiotic idea that totally conflicts with data (not to mention Aristotelian logic). It's not comparable at all.
Click to expand...

Quite. My object in asking to "contrast and compare" was in the attitudes of the practitioners of science to the two different situations. Comparisons of the theories has been done multiple times in this forum alone.
 
The Gnomon said:
Without a doubt, "physicists don't yet know all there is to know about gravity." No-one claims they do. If they did, there wouldn't be any work for them, would there? :)
Click to expand...

Umm-hmmm. I understand. I was using a bit of irony there in that sentence; probably should have smothered it in :)s.

As to possible causes of the spacecraft deviating from predicted course- I suspect that anyone having something serious to contribute would not be posting here, but posting on a physicist's discussion site. For most of us, all we can put forth is our own beliefs.
Click to expand...

Ummm, I dunno about that. We do have real capital-P Physicists on this forum, friend Gnomen. And Biologists and Chemists and e'rything, even the occasional Engineer-jack. Keep your ear to the ground; you could be surprised.
 
Last edited:
shadron said:
Ummm, I dunno about that. We do have real capital-P Physicists on this forum, friend Gnomen. And Biologists and Chemists and e'rything, even the occasional Engineer-jack. Keep your ear to the ground; you could be surprised.
Click to expand...


Unfortunately, we also seem to attract a large number of whackjobs trying to make themselves out to be the next Einstein. I'm not naming any names... :rolleyes:
 
Zeuzzz said:
EM forces are known to exist in space. They are unbelieveably stronger than gravity. Pick up a metal object with a magnet, and you have just demonstrated that a small EM attraction is able to overcome the gravitational attraction caused by the entire mass of the earth.
Click to expand...

Well, that didn't work. I used a large (2" X 2" X 1/2") neodymium and tried to pick up a 2 ton tractor. Gravity won.
 
Last edited:
Zeuzzz said:
The concept of charge is far better understood than mass in my books. The EM field that result from charge are very precise, very well understood and have very precise models that can be directly experimentally confirmed. Gravity is different is that due to its comparitive wekaness to EM effects, it is very hard to accurately assertain its exact strength to a high degree of accuracy, and it lacks a physical process by which to work. It seems like forever scientists have been searching for the graviton, trying to work out how gravity actually works, but have not come close. There is no such search in the field of charge and electromagnetism, that is the difference.
Click to expand...

Some time ago, Z, we had just that same question asked about gravity on this forum. Silly newbie that I am, I wandered out and answered just about the same way you did here - Sure we know what it is - its a warpage in the space-time continuum, we can measure it we can show how it works, we can derive observational data (like Kepler's 3rd law) from it, we can use it to by-god predict when and where that comet that now has a hole in it would be, and hit it with the proverbial silver (well, actually copper) bullet.

But the OPer came back and said, "Yes, but what *is* it?" Can you explain it (how and why), rather than describe (what)? And I couldn't answer that.

Studying up some, it becomes clear that to answer the question I have to know a lot more about quarks and such than I actually do. Furthermore, having observational evidence about gravitons would be a big help. My ignorance in such areas is not an excuse; no one has the requisite knowledge yet; but I have little doubt that it will one day come.

And the same goes for charge. You certainly told us that the concept is well grounded, but we knew that ahead of time. The point is, that until we go to the next depth in our understanding (at least), what charge is is really an unknown. Yes, we have observational evidence of the intermediary particle, unlike that for gravity. Does that buy the understanding? Some, but not entirely yet.

The point is that gravity is not "just a theory", it is a Scientific Theory. An ST to a scientist means that it is a hypothesis that encompasses all the relevant facts and has passed all test and observations up to this point after concerted efforts of friend and foe to falsify it. It's age is not important; science as a discipline is barely older than that. This explanation is from Creationism Debunking 101, and most people on this forum were likely shocked - yes, Shocked! - as I was, to hear it seriously applied to gravity. Such words are a staple in ID threads as a put-down of the theory of evolution. What you are saying to us, in essence, is that you don't believe a word of it; it is just part of Newton's alchemy and not fit to discuss.

(BTW, Newton's Theory is still an ST, even after Special Relativity, because its domain is now limited to the normal landscape, in which SR effects are negligible.)

There is wisdom in watching and observing for some time when encountering a new environment before jumping in with your cutlass, and this forum, for you, no less than it was for the rest of us, is a new environment.
 
Last edited:
If you throw your pride out, coming out swinging is the best way to sharpen the cutlass of critical thinking! People will soon show you the gaps in your fencing technique.
 
Last edited:
Dancing David said:
If you throw your pride out, coming out swinging is the best way to sharpen the cutlass of critical thinking! People will soon show you the gaps in your fencing technique.
Click to expand...

Sometimes, but sometimes you get smashed with staves, just like we have this metaphor.
 
People- for the non cosmologists here, this is an interesting thread, but the name-calling grates a bit. Can we stick to the facts?

Let me summarise my (all but nonexistent) understanding.
1.Several space probes are moving at velocities which we do not expect.
2. This means they are either subject to a push we don't understand, or less drag than we expect. Or something else.
3. Exotic speculation abounds.
4. Not wishing to needlessly expand entities, someone suggests that essentially well known EM forces are the explanation.
5. While EM forces are well known, we do not know , in this case, where they might originate.
6. A source is being suggested which seems unlikely by standard models.

OK. It seems to me that everything seems reasonable up to point 5, but the disagreements start thereafter.
I find it hard to believe that we have detailed maps of all the EM fields in the solar system, or exhaustive lists of their sources (which may be extra solar).

Is it wholly improbable that EM effects could be responsible for the odd accelerations, even if we put the more radical aspects of the Electric Universe theory in a Faraday cage for the purposes of the discussion?
 
Soapy Sam said:
Is it wholly improbable that EM effects could be responsible for the odd accelerations, even if we put the more radical aspects of the Electric Universe theory in a Faraday cage for the purposes of the discussion?
Click to expand...

No, it's not improbable, but that's got absolutely nothing to do with the Electric Universe.

I haven't seen the actual data on these spacecraft - just popular news articles - which makes it hard to comment. But the Pioneer anomaly has several plausible possible explanations involving conventional physics. For example its power source (which is radioactive) could be emitting radiation asymmetrically, thus acting as an extremely weak rocket and affecting its motion. Or it could be that there is a "wind" of particles affecting its speed. EM effects of various kinds (including the fields of the sun, in the second case) would obviously play a role in both of those.

You have to remember that the Pioneer anomaly is extremely small - it's an anomalous extra acceleration which is a tiny, tiny fraction of the already tiny acceleration due to the sun's gravity so far out - so there are a lot of normally negligible effects which could play a role.
 
Last edited:
A decade ago, after rigorous analyses, anomalies were seen with the identical Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft as they hurtled out of the solar system. Both seemed to experience a tiny but unexplained constant acceleration toward the sun.

A host of explanations have been bandied about for the Pioneer anomaly. At times these are rooted in conventional science — perhaps leaks from the spacecraft have affected their trajectories. At times these are rooted in more speculative physics — maybe the law of gravity itself needs to be modified.

Now Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer John Anderson and his colleagues — who originally helped uncover the Pioneer anomaly — have discovered that five spacecraft each raced either a tiny bit faster or slower than expected when they flew past the Earth en route to other parts of the solar system.

'Humble and perplexed'

The researchers looked at six deep-space probes — Galileo I and II to Jupiter, the NEAR mission to the asteroid Eros, the Rosetta probe to a comet, Cassini to Saturn, and the MESSENGER craft to Mercury. Each spacecraft flew past the our planet to either gain or lose orbital energy in their quests to reach their eventual targets.

In five of the six flybys, the scientists have confirmed anomalies.

"I am feeling both humble and perplexed by this," said Anderson, who is now working as a retiree. "There is something very strange going on with spacecraft motions. We have no convincing explanation for either the Pioneer anomaly or the flyby anomaly."
Click to expand...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080229/sc_space/nasabaffledbyunexplainedforceactingonspaceprobes

Zeuzzz said:
Scientists seem very unwilling to use well established EM forces to account for these observations. Most of these anomalies could likely be solved by applying the forces that would result from the suns E-field. Currently the magnitude of this field is unknown, but you could likely work out the magnitude of the force from the Pioneer data.
Click to expand...

Just thinking like a ordinary person, why couldn't they just do the calculations and come up with a figure? We know everything about the probes, just plug in the numbers and see what the force is.

They do that with other baffling problems.
 
robinson said:
Just thinking like a ordinary person, why couldn't they just do the calculations and come up with a figure? We know everything about the probes, just plug in the numbers and see what the force is.
Click to expand...

It's very easy to do so if you know two things - the field and the charge of the probe. We know the field, more or less, but the charge would have to have accumulated from somewhere, and you'd have to know how much of it there is.
 
Last edited:
We know the trajectory, the acceleration, the field, how hard would it be to just come up with a figure?

Or do we not know the field?
 
Last edited:
robinson said:
We know the trajectory, the acceleration, the field, how hard would it be to just come up with a figure?

Or do we not know the field?
Click to expand...

We know it at least roughly, especially close to the earth. So one could infer the charge the probes would need to have to account for the anomaly - if it works at all, that is. It may well be that the trajectories are not consistent with what is known about the field configuration (remember that EM forces have a direction as well as a magnitude).

Even if they are consistent within the uncertainties, you'd need an explanation for where all that charge on the probe came from, and why one didn't get any.
 
You don't need an explanation to work out a formula. You need an explanation to understand why, but certainly we can calculate stuff based on what we observe, without explaining it.
 
robinson said:
You don't need an explanation to work out a formula. You need an explanation to understand why, but certainly we can calculate stuff based on what we observe, without explaining it.
Click to expand...

Yes. Correct. Many problems arise, though, when we attempt to make an explanation from observation without fully understanding the "why" or "how".

Gravity is a physical force in the Universe that can be measured. It doesn't mean we understand how it works. And, as far as I can tell, no one is suggesting otherwise.

-Dr. Imago
 
Soapy Sam said:
Is it wholly improbable that EM effects could be responsible for the odd accelerations, even if we put the more radical aspects of the Electric Universe theory in a Faraday cage for the purposes of the discussion?
Click to expand...
.
Since all the probable causes have been ruled out, doesn't that give more weight to improbably causes? I am reminded of the following:
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes) The Sign of Four, 1890​
 
Zeuzzz said:
It's generally assumed gravity is a fact. It's not. It's a theory, invented by Newton and barely three centuries old.
Click to expand...
Just a theory that has been well enough supported by observation and reproducible results that the space program has been able to launch the Pioneer, Voyager, Magellan, and other probes that behave, and travel, pretty much as predicted. That new data is causing them to fine tune their theory, and even consider other factors to account for observations that show other forces have an input does not debunk gravity, nor the understanding of gravity's effects. It merely means there are more things, more factors, to consider.

You are setting up a false dichotomy out of wishful thinking.

DR
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom