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Also the Pioneer anomaly. From 1998 to 2012 it hinted to new physics (alternate gravity laws) when the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes flied outside the solar system.
by sampo 7y ago
Also the Pioneer anomaly. From 1998 to 2012 it hinted to new physics (alternate gravity laws) when the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes flied outside the solar system. Then in 2012 it was solved by accounting for the multiple scattering of heat radiation, as the probes are not convex bodies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly
- at_a_remove 7y agoThe Pioneer thing, I should collect on some bets. I was on the side of "not a new force, it's some kind of radiation pressure that we're overlooking by treating this like a sphere." Not long after I mentioned that, I attended a lecture by a guy who spent a lot of time working over Casimir effects on strange topologies yielding equally unlikely results. He said something to the effect of "never underestimate the numerous small anomalies created by minuscule forces on complicated surfaces." I've been watching people look for a fifth force (and sixth) force in different flavors for decades. Maybe there's more out there but we have to work very hard to eliminate all of the numerous potential sources of error. If I had to lay a guess on it, it might take centuries of work find an additional force were it present.