Re: Pioneer anomaly

In message <dgperq$nvm$1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, John Baez <baez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
writes

>I don't see how that would explain it. The motion of *planets*
>is known quite accurately and fits the usual solar model and
>Newtonian laws of gravity quite well. The motion of the Pioneer
>and Ulysses spacecraft may not. So, one needs to find things that
>the Pioneer and Ulysses spacecraft have in common that are different
>from planets, which might explain this effect.
>
>1. They are much lighter, hence more susceptible to the effect of
>small forces.
>
>2. They are manmade entities, hence affected by a variety of similar
>small forces (solar wind, radio transmissions, possible outgassing, etc.)
>
>3. They are moving quite rapidly away from the Sun.
>
>
>By the way, I believe that Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 are close
>to the ecliptic, though I'm not sure. The Ulysses spacecraft
>is quite far off the ecliptic:

As I recall at least one of Pioneer 10 & 11 got shunted out of the
ecliptic on its last slingshot. But I have a dodgy memory.

>Another key piece of the puzzle: the Viking mission to Mars did
>*not* detect the Pioneer anomaly, and it would have had an acceleration
>of this magnitude (roughly 10^{-9} meters/second^2 towards the Sun)
>been present, since its radio tracking was accurate to about 12
>meters.
>
>So, any explanation has to fit all this data, and also the data
>from the Galileo probe, which unfortunately was much more noisy,
>and inconclusive.

What about explanation 4? Unlike Viking, Pioneer and Ulysses are not
tracked by radar, but by Doppler. What if unification of gravity and
quantum mechanics leads to a small blue shift which does not correspond
to a change in classical motion.



Regards

--
Charles Francis

.

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