![]() ![]() Isaac Newtondescribed gravity as a force that weakens with distance, and the Pioneer probesare speeding out of the solar system at about 30,000 miles (48,280 kilometers)per hour. Thediscrepancy found that Pioneer 10 and 11 were each about 240,000 miles (400,000kilometers) closer to the Sun than they should be according to the currentunderstanding of gravity. “And all we had to do to make it work was to add a constantacceleration towards the Sun.” “Wehad a fitting model and it had all the effects in it that would influence thespacecraft out in interstellar space, except that it didn’t work,”said John Anderson, a retired JPL researcher who first discovered the PioneerAnomaly. The Dopplereffect is the shortening or lengthening of waves, suchas the pitch change of an ambulance as it approaches, races past, then headsaway from you. They foundan unexpected drift in each probe’s Doppler frequency, one so small thatthe three-axis stabilized probes like NASA’s Voyagerspacecraft-also headed out of the solar system-may have drowned itout with their in-flight activities. Researchersfirst noticed the Pioneer Anomaly as a navigation discrepancy while bouncingmicrowaves off each Pioneer probe as they moved farther from Earth. One AU is the distance between the Earth and Sun, or about 93 million miles (150million kilometers). Launched in19, Pioneer 10 and 11 are both billions of miles from Earth as theyzoom out of the solar system in opposite directions.Īs of Feb.6, Pioneer 10 was about 92.12 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun and headedtowards the constellation Taurus. ![]() Shapirosaid that the number of actual instances in whichoddities like the Pioneer Anomaly have opened pathways to fundamentally newphysics are rare, and that ongoing studies may yet yield a conventionalexplanation. “If Iwere a betting man, which I am not, I would bet a whole case of cranberry juicethat the Pioneer Anomaly will have an ordinary explanation that is within knownphysics,” said Irwin Shapiro, an astrophysicist at Harvard Universityunaffiliated with the Pioneer Anomaly research team, during the debate. Still other researchers have their ownopinions. Turyshev’s international team includes researchers from all Pioneer Anomaly camps,with some learning towards a conventional physics explanation while otherstrend toward the unknown fringe. He andother fellow devotees discussed the astrophysics oddity late Monday during theSeventh Annual Asimov Debate here at the American Museum of Natural History. ![]()
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