Looking for someone who can do calculations on flyby anomaly.

[Messenger]

Hi,
I am a PhD candidate doing some research on origins of field theory but my background is in E-field and power electronics and not astronomy. Looking for someone that might want to co-author a paper on the flyby anomaly or more specifically can help me check whether a prediction has any validity or not. I have a good chunk done, but without any empirical evidence I won't be able to publish and there is no one at my university who studies this, so I am here.
Regards,
Jeff
here is a video of what the question pertains to:

 

[zhermes]

That video looks pretty looney.
In most of the community the pioneer anomaly is considered resolved, see e.g. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?arXiv:1104.3985

 

[Messenger]

What about the video looks "looney"?
I wasn't aware that it was considered definitively solved but will remove it from the video as it isn't that important.

 

[zhermes]

What about the video looks "looney"?

Mostly that it doesn't make any sense, and is completely baseless in any observations, experiments, or unification theories (to my knowledge).

 

[Messenger]

Probably not the correct forum for me to go into it. Are you able to calculate the orbital data?

 

[twofish-quant]

I have a good chunk done, but without any empirical evidence I won't be able to publish and there is no one at my university who studies this, so I am here.

That's not true. Most theory papers don't have empirical evidence to support the theory, which is why it's theory. The point of a theory paper is to come up with suggestions for observationalists for what to look for.

Also you don't want to look for evidence to support your new theory. You want an experimental test that will conclusively kill it. To use an extreme example, I can argue that the big bang was caused by space turtle mating, and can find all sorts of evidence that supports that idea. The hard part is to come up with a conclusive argument that demonstrates clearly that the universe *wasn't* caused by giant turtles mating. Personally, I couldn't do it.

The other thing is to try to kill as many birds as you can with one paper. The interesting papers are those that present an experimental test for a whole class of theories. For example, a paper showing that theory A explains Pioneer would not be interesting. But a paper that shows that any theory that involves a change in gravity *couldn't* explain Pioneer would be slightly more interesting. For example, one thing that suggests that whatever caused Pioneer is something that is specific to Pioneer is the fact that if it was weird gravity, you'd also see it in Jupiter. So any new theory is not going to have to explain anolmaies but also non-anonaly and explaining a non-anomaly can be quite difficult.

 

[twofish-quant]

Probably not the correct forum for me to go into it. Are you able to calculate the orbital data?

Suppose we find out that the Pioneer anomaly has to do with thermal radiation effects from the spacecraft , and there is no anomaly. Are you going to reject your theory and work on something else?

If the calculation doesn't make a difference then there is no point in doing it.

 

[Messenger]

Suppose we find out that the Pioneer anomaly has to do with thermal radiation effects from the spacecraft , and there is no anomaly. Are you going to reject your theory and work on something else?

If the calculation doesn't make a difference then there is no point in doing it.

Of course not. But if it did turn out that the energy differences from the flyby anomaly were caused by thermal radiation, or were random and not correlated to the perigee tangent in relation to the Sun I would. Those would validate the null hypothesis that I would be testing.

 

[Messenger]

That's not true. Most theory papers don't have empirical evidence to support the theory, which is why it's theory. The point of a theory paper is to come up with suggestions for observationalists for what to look for.

Also you don't want to look for evidence to support your new theory. You want an experimental test that will conclusively kill it. To use an extreme example, I can argue that the big bang was caused by space turtle mating, and can find all sorts of evidence that supports that idea. The hard part is to come up with a conclusive argument that demonstrates clearly that the universe *wasn't* caused by giant turtles mating. Personally, I couldn't do it.

The other thing is to try to kill as many birds as you can with one paper. The interesting papers are those that present an experimental test for a whole class of theories. For example, a paper showing that theory A explains Pioneer would not be interesting. But a paper that shows that any theory that involves a change in gravity *couldn't* explain Pioneer would be slightly more interesting. For example, one thing that suggests that whatever caused Pioneer is something that is specific to Pioneer is the fact that if it was weird gravity, you'd also see it in Jupiter. So any new theory is not going to have to explain anolmaies but also non-anonaly and explaining a non-anomaly can be quite difficult.

This wouldn't be for a paper where the theory would be outlined, it would only test whether there is a correlation with the flyby anomaly magnitude and the direction of the Sun, the null hypothesis being that there isn't any. Even if that is true, it is still worth being in the body of knowledge. Thus I would be looking to kill the alternative hypothesis, that there is a correlation.

It may be buried in a paper somewhere, but I have not seen it specifically answered. This would not test anything about the Pioneer anomaly, I just wasn't aware that it was considered definitively solved and perhaps could have been an alternate line of inquiry.

The point of the video is that I was not aware that precession could be caused by negative mass (if there were such a thing). It isn't something you will find even in a text like Gravitation by Misner et al. This seems to be a research area by Hermann Bondi (type negative mass into google scholar if interested) and others. The interesting thing about negative mass is that it is repulsive, where if you were in a region all points would recede away from you, faster the farther they are away. That intrigues me.
As far as a paper that explains a whole host of problems with current physics, those seem to be far and few between in science and rightly so. I am not currently up to that task.

 

[Messenger]

Mostly that it doesn't make any sense, and is completely baseless in any observations, experiments, or unification theories (to my knowledge).

Lawrence Krauss lecture, please see around the 10 min mark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo