Pioneer 10 Anomaly and Relativity

"Ken S. Tucker" wrote in message
om...
The Anomalous acceleration is rather large about
1 part in 1700. This rules out any new g-field effect
or known GR effect or SR effect. These effects
would certainly appear as anomalies in the orbits
of bodies with high eccentricities.

IMO...
The error appears in the measurement procedure,
specifically in Galilean Relativity, let me explain,
why Gal. Rel. is a useful concept here.

Earth spacecraft (s/c)
K ~~~~~~ k=
c relative to K v relative to K.

The velocity of the radar signal transmitted from
Earth is c. However the velocity of this signal
*compared* to k in the system K is C = c - v.
Please note the word *compared*. This recognizes
the fact that the s/c is receeding from the photon.

That is not specifically Galilean, the closing
speed of the photon to the craft measured in K
is c-v in SR as well, but I think you know that.

Of course, relative to system k the signal has a
velocity c, but we need to change the reference
to k.

The paper uses the solar system barycentre frame
for the calculations.

Flames welcome...

Not a flame really, but I suggest you look at the
sections on "Relativistic equations of motion",
"Light time solution and time scales" and "Solar
corona model and weighting" where they consider
the effect on the range. Note that since the range
is derived from the Doppler shift, and the shift
is measured by counting cycles as the integral of
phase, it is the phase velocity of the signal that
matters and this is greater than c. You can find
the sections on pages 12-15 of:

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0104064

The reference to phase velocity is in note [60].
The ranging system was not working on Pioneer 10.

HTH
George