[FPSPACE] The puzzle of space probe flyby anomolies

[David Woods]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	The puzzle of space probe flyby anomolies
Date: 	Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:41:31 -0500
From: 	LARRY KLAES <ljk4 at msn.com>
To: 	drwoods1 at earthlink.net



The puzzle of flyby anomolies

January 8th, 2008 by KFC

On 8 December 1990, something strange happened to the Galileo spacecraft as 
it flew past Earth on its way to Jupiter. As the mission team watched, the 
spacecraft?s speed suddenly jumped by 4 mm per second. Nobody took much 
notice ? a few mm/s is neither here or there to mission planners.

Then on 23 January 1998, the same thing happened to NASA?s Near spacecraft 
as it swung past Earth. This time its speed jumped by 13 mm/s.

The following year, Cassini?s speed was boosted by 0.11mm/s during its Earth 
fly-by.

And people finally began to ask questions when the Rosetta spacecraft?s 
speed also jumped by 2 mm/s during its 2005 close approach.

Nobody knows what causes these jumps but Magic McCulloch, an unaffiliated 
astrothinker from the UK has an interesting proposal. He suggests that a 
sudden change in inertia might occur when objects experience very low 
accelerations.

The thinking goes like this: inertia is the result of pressure from 
so-called Unruh radiation which objects experience only when they 
accelerate. At very low accelerations, the wavelength of this radiation is 
so large that it does not fit within the universe (ie it is greater than the 
Hubble distance). As the acceleration increases, the wavelength drops to 
less than the Hubble distance and the spacecraft appears to receive a kick. 
(A similar wavelength related phenomenon happens with the Casimir force.)

McCulloch says his idea could be tested in low acceleration experiments 
using an invisibility cloak designed to make an object invisible to Unruh 
radiation (although it?s a big jump from making these cloaks for microwave 
radiation and visible light to making them for Unruh raditation). So it 
wouldn?t experiecne inertia in the same way.

Interesting idea.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0712.3022: Can the Flyby Anomalies be Explained by a 
Modification of Inertia?

http://arxivblog.com/?p=207