4 ms·

Pioneer Anomaly Solved

95 points by pwg 15y ago

hartror 15y ago
Evidence for this explanation has been around for a number of years though this appears to be the final nail in the coffin for nay sayers. Some very precise modelling of the pioneer spacecraft and its thermal properties was done a couple of years ago and this bore out the thermal radiation theory. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/12/15/farewell-pioneer-anomaly/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/12/15/...
brazzy 15y ago
Seems a bit too obvious to not have been considered/eliminated as the most likely cause all along. Or was it just too hard to confirm without the Sensor data so that people instead spent all that time discussing outlandish explanations?
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  I've heard this explanation before, but never with this degree of certainty.
- goodcanadian 15y ago
  Yes, it has been the leading hypothesis for a long time (as long as I can remember). The point of the exercise was to confirm it with high enough precision to rule out other possible explanations. If you read the article, you will see that this was mostly a non-trivial problem of tracking down all of the data.
  - Natsu 15y ago
    People might be confused because there have always been lots of articles on all the explanations that involve new physics and such, which are a lot more exciting to write about (and memorable) than boring, but likely explanations involving non-uniform thermal radiation.
vbtemp 15y ago
Oh, again already?
ars 15y ago
In a way that's too bad. Unexplained physics is always exciting.
greendot 15y ago
Yay, site's dead. Anybody have a mirror?
- evoxed 15y ago
  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cache:http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003459/&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&#... Should work.
pizza_boy 15y ago
Nice paper; probably cooler than the FTL neutrino result from last year. If you're a physicist then you might like to review, rate, or discuss it on publons: http://publons.com/publon/2406/review/ http://publons.com/publon/2406/review/ Publons is in beta at the moment, so please let me know if you have any problems, suggestions, ideas: andrew@publons.com.

95 points by pwg 15y ago

Evidence for this explanation has been around for a number of years though this appears to be the final nail in the coffin for nay sayers. Some very precise modelling of the pioneer spacecraft and its thermal properties was done a couple of years ago and this bore out the thermal radiation theory. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/12/15/farewell-pioneer-anomaly/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/12/15/...

brazzy 15y ago

Seems a bit too obvious to not have been considered/eliminated as the most likely cause all along. Or was it just too hard to confirm without the Sensor data so that people instead spent all that time discussing outlandish explanations?

bluedanieru 15y ago
I've heard this explanation before, but never with this degree of certainty.
goodcanadian 15y ago
Yes, it has been the leading hypothesis for a long time (as long as I can remember). The point of the exercise was to confirm it with high enough precision to rule out other possible explanations. If you read the article, you will see that this was mostly a non-trivial problem of tracking down all of the data.
- Natsu 15y ago
  People might be confused because there have always been lots of articles on all the explanations that involve new physics and such, which are a lot more exciting to write about (and memorable) than boring, but likely explanations involving non-uniform thermal radiation.

vbtemp 15y ago

Oh, again already?

ars 15y ago

In a way that's too bad. Unexplained physics is always exciting.

greendot 15y ago

Yay, site's dead. Anybody have a mirror?

evoxed 15y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cache:http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003459/&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&#... Should work.

pizza_boy 15y ago

Nice paper; probably cooler than the FTL neutrino result from last year. If you're a physicist then you might like to review, rate, or discuss it on publons: http://publons.com/publon/2406/review/ http://publons.com/publon/2406/review/ Publons is in beta at the moment, so please let me know if you have any problems, suggestions, ideas: andrew@publons.com.