Friday, April 29, 2005

NASA Confirms Unexplained "Pull" on Spacecraft

"NASA has confirmed an extremely mysterious and unaccounted acceleration of their spacecraft towards the sun. The unexplained acceleration is persistent yet tiny -- the result of a pull 10 billion times smaller than the force of gravity we feel on earth. The phenomenon was confirmed with the help of the Aerospace Corporation through detailed analyses of radio data from Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 and Ulysses spacecrafts."

Peter Gersten's theory remains my favorite: Our solar system is a computer simulation, and the "pull" experienced by our probes is a sign that they've reached the edge of our virtual reality.

Or maybe we're encapsulated in some kind of selectively permeable membrane emplaced by ETs in the distant past.

Or maybe we just think we know what gravity is.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

One wonders from the article if they took relativity into account. There's no mention of it in the article, which keeps talking about "Newton's law" instead of Einstein's. According to relativity, the fact that the spacecraft is speeding away from us would cause a minute increase in its mass, which could account for the added pull. You'd think NASA would know about this, so it's curious that the article doesn't mention it as a possible explanation or, in fact provide enough information even to speculate on the possibility. (Honestly, I hate this kind of dumbed-down science writing.)

1:48 PM
Mac said...

I've read various pop-science articles about this and it's still unclear to me if the probes are being "pushed" gently *out* of the Solar System or "pulled" back in. (I've encountered both "push" and "pull." My original understanding was that there was a "pull" slowing them down infintesimally; now I'm not sure.)

2:09 PM
Anonymous said...

And if it's "dark energy," it should be pushing not pulling. Are we witnessing the genesis of the space community's equivalent of an "urban myth" here?

4:07 PM
Mac said...

I think the effect is real enough. I just don't think the pop-sci press has done a very good job putting it in perspective.

4:16 PM

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