On 24 Jun 2006 23:08:00 -0700, "GSS"
wrote:


Joe Jakarta wrote:
Joe Jakarta wrote:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...4583414B7F0000


"Anderson and theorist Michael M. Nieto of Los Alamos National
Laboratory have proposed a way to filter the ideas, noting the
interesting fact that the direction of the anomalous force would be
different for each theory. If the force points toward the sun, then it
should be a gravitational effect. If it points toward Earth, it should
be an anomaly relating to the velocity of light. If it points in the
direction of motion, it should be a drag force or a modification of
inertia. And finally, if it points along the spin axis of the probes,
it should indicate a force generated by the craft. ..."


Rough data for Pioneer 11 indicate that

"The anomalous acceleration was present ... at shorter distances, as
far in as ~10 AU.

"... also ... that the anomaly may be much smaller at distances 10
AU. It appears to be amplified (or turned on) at a distance of ~10 AU
from the Sun. This is approximately when the craft flew by Saturn and
entered an hyperbolic, escape trajectory."

gr-qc/0503021
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 21:28:29 GMT (392kb)
A Route to Understanding of the Pioneer Anomaly
Authors: Slava G. Turyshev, Michael Martin Nieto, John D. Anderson

I understand that very many alternatives are being explored to find
some acceptable explanation for the observed Pioneer Anomaly.

The main obsevational data for Pioneer -10 consists of Doppler
frequency record from which we can compute the spacecraft velocity data
and hence range data.

May I request the learned readers to kindly explain (if possible) how
exactly did we come to the conclusion from the available Doppler data
that the Anomaly exists? More precisely, how do we compute the
Anomalous acceleration from the available Doppler data?

GSS
Now that you ask, the discovery has nothing to do with the Doppler
effect, which is the change in frequency corresponding to Pioneer's
velocity, during a round trip to the target satellite.

It comes from integration of an accurate model for predicted frequency
over years of time, during which it was found that the station
frequency consistently and secularly exceeded the frequency predicted
by the model. Over a much studied 8 year period, it amounted to 1.5 Hz
out of 2,922,000,000 Hz.
The difference would be essentially the same if you used the station
frequency or the reflected frequency, the latter contributing an
anomaly equal to only Ap/25,000, where V/c = 1/25000.

There is every indication the causeof this drift is the secular
increase of all atomic clocks at Hubble rate of 2.6e-18/sec, while the
model perforce used the established frequency of 2.292GHz m/l.

John Polasek
http://www.dualspace.net.