Flyby Anomaly

[D H]

JPL discovered a strange anomaly in the velocities of spacecraft that used the Earth to provide a gravity boost to help the spacecraft reach their ultimate objective. An intro on the flyby anomaly, from the Planetary Society: http://www.planetary.org/news/2008/0228_Researchers_Investigate_New_Cosmic.html

28 February, 2008. A new study by researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows that spacecrafts that swing by the Earth are subject to a small but unexplained increase in their velocity. Is an unknown physical force at work, or something far more mundane?

 

Some exotic explanations were proposed, including General Relativity (see the above article), the Unruh effect, ... (McCulloch, M.E., "Can the flyby anomalies be explained by a modification of inertia?", submitted 18 Dec 2007 to arxiv.org) and dark matter (Adler, S.L., "Can the flyby anomaly be attributed to earth-bound dark matter?", submitted 19 May 2008 to arxiv.org).

 

 

The answer is probably a lot more mundane: It is probably just sloppy math (Mbelek, J.P., "Special relativity may account for the spacecraft flyby anomalies", submitted 11 Sep 2008 to arxiv.org).

In the following, we show that SR transverse Doppler shift together with the addition of velocities are sufficient to explain the flyby anomalies. Thus, GR does not need to be questioned and the

flyby anomaly is merely due to an incomplete analysis using conventional physics.

 

 

Ooops. This last article, BTW, is amazingly brief and to the point.

[iNow]

the flyby anomaly is merely due to an incomplete analysis using conventional physics.

Darn it, and I'd SO hoped that I could blame it on witches, homosexuals, and the rampant godlessness taking hold in our society.

 

 

Thanks for the interesting update, DH.

[D H]

Darn it, and I'd SO hoped that I could blame it on witches, homosexuals, and the rampant godlessness taking hold in our society.

 

For those of you who don't know how to read scathing remarks in scientific papers, the line I highlighted in the first post, "the flyby anomaly is merely due to an incomplete analysis using conventional physics", is shorthand for "You blithering idiots! You were chasing dark matter, the Unruh effect, and flaws in general relativity as possible causes when all you had to do was check for sloppy and errant mathematics. You might as well as have blamed the effect on witches, homosexuals, and rampant godlessness."

[Sisyphus]

Ah, yes. I often observe anomalies in which my calculations yield unequal sides of equations.