Something Strange is happening in the Outer Reaches of our Solar System.

This is a fascinating thread! I was always under the impression that
the further a craft traveled from Sol's gravity well, the FASTER it would
fly. Now it appears as if spaceships have something like an elastic
tether, with one end connected to the spaceship and the other end
connected to our sun. The further away you fly, the tighter this
"rubberband" gets. I wonder if propulsion was shut down, would a
craft zoom back towards the sun like comets do?

The velocity of a spacecraft away from the Sun would only increase if it was experiencing thrust. Since the Pioneer and Voyager probes do not have engines, they are constantly slowing down as the Sun's gravity tries to pull them back. However, they are moving fast enough to overcome the Sun's gravitational field, and will eventually enter interstellar space. The "Pioneer anomaly" appears to be slowing them down slightly more than theory predicts, but it is still nowhere near enough to stop them from leaving the Solar System.

Originally posted by drumist69
I hadn't heard of the electric sun model before, but this sounds familiar. I remember reading of electrical anomalies regarding comets and the sun. I'll have to read up on this. Thanks! Andy

That's right since comets have such a large elliptical orbit they enter in from outside the solar system and begin interacting with the suns electrical field, the change in the electrical charge causes them to begin discharging plasma in long filaments. The concept of comets being large dirty snowballs has been proven to be false the only difference between a comet and a meteor is it's orbit.

Originally posted by orionthehunter
Thanks for the link. I don't know if this theory is accepted yet or not by the scientific community but it sounds very interesting. I can easily imagine our textbooks will be revised and plasma theory will need updating. Maybe we are one step closer to understanding how everything in the universe is related (I'm thinking about the Unified Field Theory). Perhaps this theory will even help in the development of fusion power. It's hard to say what long term effects new knowledge might bring. Thanks.

I'm wondering now if this theory could solve the mystery of dark matter.

I believe EU theory is the closest yet to a unified theory, It's a convergence of different scientific fields. It acknowledges the electrical connection from the atom outward, It has the potential for a real paradigm shift in many areas.
Gravity is acknowledged as a whimpy force, magnetic fields exist everywhere in space and the only thing that creates magnetic fields is electricity. Knowing that electromagnetism is a billion, billion, billion, billion times stronger than gravity and is repulsive as well as attractive, why should gravity be considered the glue that's holding galaxies together? no need for dark matter or black holes, you have to remember these are mathematical inventions to make a theory work, one that is based on the assumption that gravity is the only force at work in the large scale.
The fact that solar particles accelerate even as they increase their distance from the sun shows the suns immense electrical field is stronger than the meager gravitational effects.
Since the craft will be a negatively charged object it is fairly evident what is happening, well a strong case at least.

[edit on 14-8-2007 by squiz]

[edit on 14-8-2007 by squiz]

It's all very simple, folks...as Arthur C. Clarke said in his best work, 'the City and the Stars'...
The stars are not for Man.

Magnetosphere, = Magnetic influence of the Earth or any other similar planet. (such as Jupiter)

Magnetotail, = Extension of the Sun’s electromagnectic influence away from the Magnetosphere.

Magnetopause, = the outer edge of the Magnetosphere. This becomes the turbulent region and is called the Magnetosheath. This can be an area affected by solar winds.

Now, if at this area (where Pioneer is) our solar winds are colliding with solar winds from an opposite polarity solar system, then it might be causing the ‘slow down’.
(just my $0.02)

That's right since comets have such a large elliptical orbit they enter in from outside the solar system and begin interacting with the suns electrical field

Comets do not originate from outside the Solar System. The very long period comets come from a vast spherical "halo" called the Oort Cloud, which is located up to a light year from the Sun, and the short period comets are generally believed to originate from the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt (a large disk of objects beyond the orbit of Neptune).

barring the idea of new physics rules, it would need to be something particulate in nature that is creating drag on the craft (perhaps the edge of the oort cloud?)

any infantecimal force could be doing this. in fact the ion propulsion we use on some of our probes exert thrust equivalent to the weight of a piece of paper on earth. seems that after 30 or so years something even weaker could cause this anomaly.

All I can think is, it might have something to do with our sun? who knows, The universe is a HUGE place, ofcourse we arent going to know a lot about it, these things take time.

My first thought on this was that it had something to do with the Sun, as well. One of the articles already linked mentions that all known phenomena regarding the Sun have been ruled out, though.

or haven't people thought they may have entered a time dilation bubble? Could the bubble been created by ET so that they could study the crafts before doing anything?

in theory, time dilation are possible and may have already been used by ET for aeons.

Perhaps the probes are exactly where they're supposed to be. Could it be a miscalculation or a constant unknown that is effecting the Doplar frequencies we used to track these deep space probes? Maybe these waves are slowed down or sped up as they travel the outer reaches of our planetary system. Could there be a barrier to our solar system that we do not know of? Similar to out atmosphere, only more of an electromagnetic nature? Would we have been able to detect anomolies such as these with comets. Is there anyway we could know or disprove this?

newscientist.com

Engineers use the Doppler shift in the signals from the Pioneers to monitor their positions in space. As the craft heads out of the Solar System, the change in frequency of the signals received on Earth enables engineers to calculate the speed of the spacecraft. 'Using the Doppler shift for navigation is standard practice in deep space missions,' says Richard Fimmel, manager of the Pioneer Missions Office at NASA Ames. 'It is a technique that Pioneer 10 helped make routine.'

Well IMO science is still in a stage of infancy-adolescance

wether this is why the anomaly is occuring we don't know

but when areas such as consciousness, and the spirit and other areas of science that are not tangible or able to be put in a box or formula, (so called mystic realms) they go UNFUNDED and largely become unknowns at least to most scientists (maybe there are those that do study these phenomena) but this does not make them UNREAL, just ignored.

until these areas are funded and studied, we will remain ignorant and focused on materialism, (could that be understood by some and what people in power want anyway? ABSOLUTELY!


[edit on 14-8-2007 by cpdaman]

Originally posted by GENERAL EYES
Whatever the reason for this anomoly, it'll keep several thousand scientists employed a bit longer in the space program.

That's for sure. And we're the folks who are forced to put forth the money in taxes to make sure they are employed. Hmmm.....

It does seem to be about the love of money here.

But I must admit that I do miss the Nasa channel once we switched over to Verizon Fios.

[edit on 8/14/2007 by Jesus-Is-Real]

"Each year, they fall behind in their projected travel by about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles). "

5000km! This is not much of an anomaly.

Let's suppose the crafts are doing 50000km/h.
That is 50000km x 24h x 365d = 4.38*10^8km in one year.

So how many speed are the crafts loosing in one year?

Is NASA that accurate in measuring the distance of these two crafts at billions of km from earth?

Originally posted by Mogget
Comets do not originate from outside the Solar System. The very long period comets come from a vast spherical "halo" called the Oort Cloud, which is located up to a light year from the Sun, and the short period comets are generally believed to originate from the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt (a large disk of objects beyond the orbit of Neptune).

Yes, a poor choice of words on my part, as leaving the solar system would mean leaving the suns influence. The fact that they travel to and from the far reaches was my point, they are highly negatively charged and attract the positive charges from the sun resulting in the plasma sheath and tail, all bodies in the solar system display this, whether it's visible or not depends on the charge. The heliosphere or magnetosphere can be thought of as a plasma sheath or bubble.
There's no evidence that suggest that comets formed in the so called Oort cloud, this is another theory based on no evidence. The evidence that has surfaced has shown that comets were formed with processes involving extremely high temperatures. A surprise for the dirty snowball crowd, pictures of comets also show no support for the snowball from the Kuiper belt theory.

My first introduction to ATS was through a hour long video I watched by this guy at a Roswell Convention. He had just returned to the US after a long exile to Australia. He went through explaining theories of gravitation force and anti gravity. If anyone remembers his name, please post it, as my mind plays tricks on me.
One of the things was a theory of gravitational force where a gravity wave or graviton is expelled from the sun in a manner like photons. The wave runs out until it hits the gravity wave from another celestial body. Then it starts to behave not unlike a ripple in a pool, rebounding back onto itself and forming resonance zones as the frequencies mesh. These zones are where the planets orbit.
The irregular orbits of the planets would seem to support this theory.
In keeping with this, perhaps the reduction in velocity of the two probes also supports this. They may have reached the point in space where the gravity zone of our solar system rebounds from the gravity zone of another celestial body.
Think of it as the interface between two ripples in collision. They will reflect from eachother and then merge. But if you were to continue inputing the energy that you used to create the ripple, they would hold their form and there would be a measurable area of interface between them. If you measured the resistance to movement in the ripple, and then the resistance to movement in the interface area, the resistance would be higher in the interface area.
So perhaps, the probes have reached this interface area, and are experiencing it and sending data back on it. It could be the first data we have that can be useful as a comparison for the study of gravity.

Great post and Great discussion

I am always amazed that these craft go so far without hitting or being hit by obstacles like micro meteorites and dust which is essentially iron ore from dead stars. It is like being sandblasted I imagine. That they are speeding up reminded me of an article I read years ago about a girl who had mapped out gravity lanes for travelling in our solar sytem..some portion being able to accelerate or slow down depending where on her map.

Its nice to know our physicists are perplexed..It must be a humbling experience., while..aside from the jab..I hope its not an excuse to ask the taxpayer for another grant..
I heard about that electric sun theory also and it sounded very convincing ..there is an artist who uses that in his artwork..creating great canvasses that mimic what the universe is like..

here is a link to that

SyS
electric universe

Just a quick note to point out that they are slowing down, not speeding up.

I'm thinking that there's some kind of unseen gravity source holding these things inwards to our solar system. Doesn't the report say that the vehicles were experiencing a SUNWARDS PULL?

Either that or for some reason just outside of our solar system space "thickens", between planetary groups, possibly due to a lack of movement of gravity?

...

Suns gravitational pull is my current best guess.

My theory of the slow down? gravity. maybe the speed of the crafts are being pulled bac to the Sun, much as a ball thrown up will eventually slow down and come back.

Just thought I'd throw in these illustrations, from Wiki,

closer view

portraying the conventional depictions of the the Heliosphere and the spacecraft in question.

And the wiki article

You know what they say , "a picture...."

[edit on 17-8-2007 by Jbird]