Really dumb holding your posts for review. It's been an interesting ride since the JPL first noticed the Anomaly. Everybody, and their brother, tried to use it to show there's an 'Anomaly' in GR and that 'they' have the answer.
mathman, rpenner, brucep, et al, I'm thinking this is (actually) very good news. (QUESTION) Is there any indication that the movement of the Solar System is creating any electric fields, or currents; or magnetic fields in orbiting particles? Most Respectfully, R
Hi R It is good news. From the beginning I was pretty sure it wasn't going to need 'New' physics to explain. I'm not to knowledgeable about Galactic Magnetic Fields but I got something for you. Components of the Galaxy http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/milkyway/components.html "The Galactic Magnetic Field and Cosmic Rays The disk of the galaxy is permeated by a magnetic field. This field is weak, being only about 1/50,000 of the strength of the Earth's magnetic field at the surface, but it influences the motion of charged particles in the galaxy. One important consequence of the magnetic field is that it can bend the path of and even trap the high-energy charged particles that we call cosmic rays. Thus the galaxy is filled with cosmic rays and because of the effect of the magnetic field we cannot tell with certainty where they come from, though the strongest arguments favor supernova explosions for their source." The following link is a huge resource: Level 5 Knowledgebase http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/index.html Click 'Text Search Engine' and type in 'galactic magnetic fields', or whatever you want. Look at the Author Index also. A Paper I picked out but haven't read. GALACTIC MAGNETISM: Recent Developments and Perspectives http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March03/Beck/Beck_contents.html Don't let the math scare you away from looking through them. The Introduction, text, and Conclusions make them understandable at the interested novice level. Have a good one.
I'm not so sure. I guess it's good news in that a puzzling problem has been solved, that they've learned something about thermal radiation modelling, and that it dramatically affirms our civilization's technological capacity and understanding of the relevant physics to awesome precision. But it's also a bit of a letdown. It means that the anomaly doesn't point to previously unknown and potentially exploitable physical properties of spacetime after all. The exciting new science the anomaly hinted at turned out to be illusory.
Nice article which links to some of the proposals to explain the anomalous acceleration. Finding-the-source-of-the-pioneer-anomaly http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/finding-the-source-of-the-pioneer-anomaly Initially I thought the scientists would find a reason such as this long ago. Not that easy. Great work in the end.
