Conventional Forces can Explain the Anomalous Acceleration of Pioneer 10
Abstract
Anderson, et al. find the measured trajectories of Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft deviate from the trajectories computed from known forces acting on them. This unmodelled acceleration can be accounted for by non-isotropic radiation of spacecraft heat. Various forms of non-isotropic radiation were proposed by Katz, Murphy, and Scheffer, but Anderson, et al. felt that none of these could explain the observed effect. This paper recalculates the combined total of all of these effects, over the duration of the experiment, based upon spacecraft construction. It correctly predicts the magnitude of the acceleration, but predicts a 10% change between intervals I and III as opposed to the 3% observed. The two different measurements of the effect (SIGMA and CHASMP) themselves differ by 4% in interval III. If we treat this difference as a statistical effect, then there is about an 8% chance that the proposed model alone accounts for all the unmodelled acceleration. In any case, by accounting for the bulk of the acceleration it makes it much more likely that the entire effect can be explained without the need for new physics.Keywords
All Related Versions
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: