Talk:Pioneer anomaly - Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MiszaBot I (talk | contribs) at 02:39, 23 August 2012 (Robot: Archiving 1 thread (older than 100d) to Talk:Pioneer anomaly/Archive for 2012.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 02:39, 23 August 2012 by MiszaBot I (talk | contribs) (Robot: Archiving 1 thread (older than 100d) to Talk:Pioneer anomaly/Archive for 2012.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

This article has not yet been rated on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Physics Mid‑importance

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Astronomy Low‑importance

	Astronomy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Astronomy, which collaborates on articles related to Astronomy on Misplaced Pages.AstronomyWikipedia:WikiProject AstronomyTemplate:WikiProject AstronomyAstronomy
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Spaceflight

	Spaceflight portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spaceflight, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of spaceflight on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SpaceflightWikipedia:WikiProject SpaceflightTemplate:WikiProject Spaceflightspaceflight
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Astronomy: Solar System

	Astronomy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Astronomy, which collaborates on articles related to Astronomy on Misplaced Pages.AstronomyWikipedia:WikiProject AstronomyTemplate:WikiProject AstronomyAstronomy
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Solar System task force.

Archives

This page has archives. Sections older than 100 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 3 sections are present.

Multiple reasons? + 2 cents of speculation

A few minutes ago I was looking at a drawing that depicts sun's movement in relation to interstellar cloud movement. The depicted angle is nearly 90 degrees. It occurred to me to ask (the gurus) if this single fact could account for the Pioneer Effect (PE). By reading this article it suddenly seemed so plausible that there is more than one cause. Say, something like a push/pull game of forces. Besides, maybe I am going to say something stupid, in such a "high" speed during so long, how much should we expect Pioneers' clocks to have "delayed" in relation to ours'? Could this be part of an explanation? What I mean is: if processors have their clocks slowed down by speed for long enough, could radio emissions reflect this slowing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.105.217.106 (talk • contribs)

Solved?

Check this article out bro.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Heat_is_Source_of_Pioneer_Anomaly_999.html 216.246.130.20 (talk) 23:53, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Resolution of anomoly/ proposal to delete most of this article

It appears that the Pioneer Anomaly can now be explained entirely by a careful modeling of heat radiation from the spacecraft. I propose that there be a mild edit to the lede section of this article and then a deletion of the overwhelming majority of the article. While this was an unresolved open problem in physics, it was highly noteworthy; now that the anomoly has been explained without the need for new physics, it is much less so.

A lot of work was done in collecting and organizing the citations in this article, so I think a brief sentence or two for each existing citation might reasonably remain. The wide-range of suggested explanations should remain to demonstrate that the anomoly was actively studied for many years.

Citations for the resolution of this problem should include (if they are not already listed in the article)

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424750/nasa-releases-new-pioneer-anomaly-analysis/ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7362/full/477009d.html http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423504/pioneer-anomaly-solved-by-1970s-computer-graphics/ http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Heat_is_Source_of_Pioneer_Anomaly_999.html

plus the publication data for http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.5222 http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3985 http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.2507

I don't want to step on anyone's toes, so I'll wait until 26 August 2012 before massively revising this article. 86.182.157.114 (talk) 20:44, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd support a revision of the article. I'm not sure whether to call it solved, or just that most regard it as solved. I'm not sure about deleting the rest: the history of the explanations people proposed may well still be of interest. But making it clear they are obsolete, and trimming the other stuff, makes sense William M. Connolley (talk) 09:23, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree with a major deletion of the overwhelming majority of the article. Discussion of all the issues before this had been solved seems noteworthy to me. There is certainly alot of interesting science. I really don't see "resolution" as a rationale for deleting most of this article. Also, as before I really don't see any need to tinker with the lead. It appears that the three paragraphs in the lead cannot be pared down any further, and provide good coverage of the article. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 14:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Supportive - A remarkably similar thing happened at the Opera faster-than-light neutrino debacle article. Before the cause was finally found and documented, an entire body of —sometimes interesting and notable, but with hindsight de-facto faulty— explanations was allowed a place in the article. The major part has been removed now. Rightfully or not? I guess that, in time, the answer to that question will gradually but irrevocably shift from not rightfully to rightfully due to simple loss of notability. It looks like the same thing will happen with this article. The difference is of course that in this case it took much longer to come up with an entirely accepted/acceptable explanation for the "anomaly". So, I guess there's no other option than —at least in the medium-long run— to support a more or less drastic pruning of this article. - DVdm (talk) 16:16, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

First, a disclaimer - I've written articles on the anomaly, so I have a dog in this hunt. I'd suggest a different re-write, emphasizing the "history of science" type aspects. It would resemble a more formal and documented version of THE PIONEER ANOMALY: A WILD GOOSE CHASE?. This would include:

Discovery of the anomaly, by Anderson et. al
Independent confirmation by Marquardt Independent Confirmation of the Pioneer 10 Anomalous Acceleration.
A discussion of the many proposed solutions, both mundane and new physics. There are hundreds, so maybe a one-line description of the 10-20 most popular (as determined by non-author cites), and a count of the rest. In fairness to the theorists, it should include at least some theoretical arguments against a "physics" solution for the anomaly, such as Can the Pioneer anomaly be of gravitational origin? A phenomenological answer.
The quest to retrieve the old data. This is interesting in the sense of scientific archaeology.
The discovery, using this data, that the effect is in fact decreasing. Support for Temporally Varying Behavior of the Pioneer Anomaly from the Extended Pioneer 10 and 11 Doppler Data Sets
The nail in the coffin paper, using the detailed telemetry and a detailed thermal model. Support for the Thermal Origin of the Pioneer Anomaly

It would be great to end with a 'scientific retrospective" paper, describing why this took so long to straighten out. One of the main factors is that new physics get you a Nobel prize, whereas overlooked engineering trivia get you a cite or two. However, no one to my knowledge has written this paper yet, so we probably can't include this. LouScheffer (talk) 00:56, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with LouScheffer's proposal, and I like the idea of a formal variation of the linked article. If feasable I wouldn't mind including some of the more outlandish ideas as mentioned in the article after the real science has been covered from a historical perspective. That is, if its possible, if we have room, and if any of them fit in the article. Obviously these would not be scientific explanations, but they may be somehow interesting. Also, I saw that movie where the "evil" Klingons used the pioneer spacecraft for target practice -- very humorous. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 07:05, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Categories: