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Something new under the sun

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?

We actually don't know the field that well. Although we can predict what is probably happening out there, the Pioneer and Voyager probes are the first manmade things to ever travel so far from the Sun. Recently, at least one of the Voyager probes probably crossed the heliopause (the boundary between the Sun's influence via the solar wind and interstellar space, much like the magnetopause which separates the Earth from the solar wind), and although the other hasn't travelled as far, it is at a significant angle to the equatorial plane and may have reached the heliopause as well. Contact was lost with both Pioneer probes before they got this far. I say they probably have reached the heliopause because we really don't know. None of these craft were designed to measure that sort of thing, and even if they had been, the only thing able to be recieved from that distance was telemetry data.

There have been essentially no measurements of fields or particles that far out in the Solar System. In fact, there has actually been very little measurement even close to Earth. This is why the Pioneer anomaly is an anomaly. We can tell that there is something going on, but we just don't know enough to say what it is. We can make some pretty good guesses, and make ballpark calculations to say that it definitely can't be certain things, but that's pretty much it.
 
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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​

There are two problems with that. Firstly, how do you know you have eliminated everything? There could be any number of explanations that you just haven't thought of yet. This is exactly the same reasoning that creationists use - they try to find a problem with evolution and then declare that since evoution is wrong, creationism must be right. The thing is, even if evolution does turn out to be wrong, it still says nothing about the validity of creationism. The same is true here. Even if we do manage to rule out all other possibilities that we can currently think of, it doesn't add any more weight to the electric universe claims.

The other problem is that Arthur Conan Doyle believed in faries, and various other nonsense, even after they had been proven as hoaxes. Possibly not the best person to take advice from on the scientific method.
 
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Since all the probable causes have been ruled out, doesn't that give more weight to improbably causes?

They have not been ruled out in the case of Pioneer, which has been around for a long time. This more recent stuff hasn't even been published (scientifically) yet.
 
There are two problems with that. Firstly, how do you know you have eliminated everything?

The same question is valid for everything, but we don't let that stop us from making up theories and doing calculations, based on what is observed.

There could be any number of explanations that you just haven't thought of yet.

The same is true for anything, but again, that doesn't stop us from moving forward.

This is exactly the same reasoning that creationists use - they try to find a problem with evolution and then declare that since evoution is wrong, creationism must be right. The thing is, even if evolution does turn out to be wrong, it still says nothing about the validity of creationism. The same is true here.

No, it is nothing like that crap. Please, get a grip there.

Even if we do manage to rule out all other possibilities that we can currently think of, it doesn't add any more weight to the electric universe claims.

Again with the electric Universe! Does every thread have to become the same?

Understanding the Heliosphere and any and all effects from it, is a huge unknown. Resisting the very concept that the solar wind or magnetism or charged particles can interact with a space probe is just dumb.

It is the opposite of science.
 
The same question is valid for everything, but we don't let that stop us from making up theories and doing calculations, based on what is observed.

That's the whole point. Doyle's statement is bollocks because it doesn't matter how many alternative theories you eliminate, all that matters is the evidence. If your theory matches the evidence, it stands on its own. If it doesn't, it fails, regardless of any other theories have also failed.

No, it is nothing like that crap. Please, get a grip there.

I have a perfectly good grip. It's exactly the same argument. Doyle's statement says that if you eliminate the theories you can think of, whatever is left is correct. That is exactly the same thing creationists say - if you can eliminate evolution, creationism is correct. They are both exactly the same and they are both wrong.

Again with the electric Universe! Does every thread have to become the same?

Understanding the Heliosphere and any and all effects from it, is a huge unknown. Resisting the very concept that the solar wind or magnetism or charged particles can interact with a space probe is just dumb.

It is the opposite of science.

What the hell are you talking about?
 
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.
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All spacecraft charge in the interplanetary medium via a variety of mechanisms. (ref) (and others)

We also know that the solar system is subject to an "interplanetary electric field" (Refs), and the heliospheric current sheet has its own electric field. However, it's possible that the interplanetary medium shields a spacecraft's varying charge from these fields.
 
This paper gives an overview of electrostatic charging which occurs on spacecraft in different plasma environments. Particular emphasis is given to differential charging between sunlit and shadowed insulated surfaces, a phenomenon which is often observed in the geostationary orbit. It can generate potential differences of several kilovolts between adjacent surfaces. This can lead to discharges and serious spacecraft anomalies such as spurious telecommands caused by voltage and current transients on cable harnesses. Experience with the GEOS and ISEE satellites has demonstrated that differential charging can be avoided by making outer surface elements conductive and connecting them to a common ground.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983SSRv...34..289G


Now that is fascinating.

Didn't the voyagers fly through Jupiter and Saturn's magnetic fields?
 
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There are two problems with that. Firstly, how do you know you have eliminated everything?
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You don't, but you do try the most obvious ideas first. I have no doubt when it is solved, that the "answers was staring them in the face all along". I am also making some bald assumptions equating "obvious" with "probable", which isn't very scientific.


The other problem is that Arthur Conan Doyle believed in faries, and various other nonsense, even after they had been proven as hoaxes. Possibly not the best person to take advice from on the scientific method.
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And Isaac Newton studied the occult. I've even heard that some scientists believe in a deity.
 
Try jumping off any cliffs lately?

Can't one argue that this rejoinder isn't necessarily applicable to cosmology? The idea the things don't always scale up seems to be why relativity had to be theorized and tested, which Einstein and others have pursued.

What is observed in the local frame of reference (a Newtonian frame of reference in this case) might be locally true, but not universally true.

As it works out, the local effect of gravity overcomes EM, strong, and weak forces for a walking body at the edge of a cliff when line of travel extends beyond the cliff's edge. (Clumsy wording, I know.)

I am nitpicking here, of course.

DR
 
Can't one argue that this rejoinder isn't necessarily applicable to cosmology?

But that's the difference between knowing gravity exists (which is indeed a fact) and being able to correctly predict its effects with precision (which requires a theory). To say that gravity is a theory is simply wrong. We have a theory of gravity, and it's not called "gravity", it's called general relativity. General relativity is a theory, gravity is a fact.
 
But that's the difference between knowing gravity exists (which is indeed a fact) and being able to correctly predict its effects with precision (which requires a theory). To say that gravity is a theory is simply wrong. We have a theory of gravity, and it's not called "gravity", it's called general relativity. General relativity is a theory, gravity is a fact.
I thought gravity was a force. :p

:duck:

As I said, I was nitpicking, sorry to derail.

(PS: Your Walt Whitman quote's "Never Again" seems to have happened at least once since he wrote that. FWIW.)

DR
 
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.

Because then the Vacum Energy Dust Bunnies would take thier retribution...
 
Resisting the very concept that the solar wind or magnetism or charged particles can interact with a space probe is just dumb.

It is the opposite of science.

What the hell are you talking about?

If Robinson has hold of this argument by the wrong tail, it seems I have too.

Here's what I'm thinking.
1. The solar system has lots of electromagnetic fields and charged particles in it.
2. We don't know much about their strengths or distribution.
3. Some spacecraft are behaving a very , very slight bit other than we anticipate.
4. The above three facts may be connected.

What did I miss?
 
It would be interesting to see an article on this story that contains more depth.

The article says that the Pioneer anomaly was a minute acceleration towards the sun.

It also says that 5 out of 6 earth flybys show this anomaly. But it does not expressly state the direction of the anomalous acceleration on those probes. Was it towards the earth?

It also makes no mention of magnitude. Were the anomalies near earth all the same (roughly) size? Were they similar to that experience by pioneer?

It's pretty hard to draw any conclusions without knowing.
 
Can't one argue that this rejoinder isn't necessarily applicable to cosmology? The idea the things don't always scale up seems to be why relativity had to be theorized and tested, which Einstein and others have pursued.

Sure - and it has been tested, continuously and in a host of different ways, on every scale we can access.

We have a model which explains almost every observation ever made given a few numbers as inputs (the mass of DM particles, a few couplings, and the cosmological constant, plus the standard model and general relativity). It might be wrong, but to make that compelling you need a competing model that matches the data at least as well with as many or fewer parameters. Little data anomalies like Pioneer have to be taken in that context - the odds are very good it's just something prosaic rather than anything really new.
 
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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?


It certainly doesn't help the cause of those arguing for EM-effects when they say things like "gravity is just a theory", "the big bang is a joke", and comparing modern big bang cosmology to "religious creationism." Not to mention, when those arguing for an EU start making errors in basic physics (repeatedly), misrepresenting a scientific paper to support their claims, and have glaring inconsistencies within their own arguments (GR is a well-established theory but BBC is bogus...), it really doesn't help their cause. This is most especially true with people who do know physics - like me and Sol.

If one of these folks could actually make a decent, self-consistent argument, I might be willing to listen. As yet, all I'm seeing is a whole buncha woo flyin' around.

EDIT: That said, I am highly intrigued by the Pioneer Anomaly. Who knows what the hell is going on with it? I sure don't. But as many others have already stated, not knowing the source of the Anomaly doesn't automatically lend any validity to EU-PU. To state that it does is merely making an argument from ignorance - I might as well say that it's all due to drunken cosmic leprechauns.
 
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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.


EXACTLY!!!

I wonder how Zeuzzz and the other EU-PU proponents would react if we started to call their ideas "not a fact - just a theory"?
 
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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​

That, as has been pointed out by a number of authors, is a load of malarky. Isaac Asimov, who loved mystery stories (and wrote enough to fill 3 books of them, I think) pointed out the obvious problems pointed out by Cuddles - you can never really eliminate all the possibilities in real life, and you rarely know what all the real possibilities are. Doyle setup the mysteries in such a way as to limit the possibilities, but as the legion Sherlockians have shown, it is both contrived and incomplete in almost every case. Good logic, bad application.

It doesn't even make the improbable more probable. Every hypothesis must stand on its own; creationism and ID are the only "theories" I know of that exist as a result of failure of other theories, and we know why that is.
 
It would be interesting to see an article on this story that contains more depth.

The article says that the Pioneer anomaly was a minute acceleration towards the sun.

It also says that 5 out of 6 earth flybys show this anomaly. But it does not expressly state the direction of the anomalous acceleration on those probes. Was it towards the earth?

Good points.
Pioneer 10 and 11 launched in 1972 and 1973. Today each is several billion miles away, heading in opposite directions out of the solar system.

The discrepancy caused by the anomaly amounts to about 248,500 miles (400,000 kilometers), or roughly the distance between Earth and the Moon. That's how much farther the probes should have traveled in their 34 years, if our understanding of gravity is correct. (The distance figure is an oversimplification of the actual measurements, but more on that in a moment.)

Scientists are quick to suggest the Pioneer anomaly, as they call it, is probably caused by the space probes themselves, perhaps emitting heat or gas. But the possibilities have been tested and modeled and penciled out, and so far they don't add up.

Which leaves open staggering possibilities that would force wholesale reprinting of all physics books:

* Invisible dark matter is tugging at the probes
* Other dimensions create small forces we don't understand
* Gravity works differently than we think
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_041018.html

I'm no rocket scientist, but I know that real rocket scientist, or even more importantly, satellite scientist, take such problems seriously.

Any deviation from the expected trajectory has to have a reason. This is hard science, as hard and real as it gets with satellite scientist. Even a smaller deviation than measured is important. It means something.

...more than a decade ago a researcher noticed something funny about two Pioneer spacecraft that were streaming toward the edge of the solar system. They weren't where they should have been.

Something was holding the probes back, according to calculations of their paths, speed and how the gravity of all the objects in the solar system -- and even a tiny push provided by sunlight -- ought to act on them.

I doubt anybody thought of measuring something like this, because nobody expected it. As somebody wise pointed out, if you don't know what is there, you can't plan in advance on how to measure it.
 

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