My theory is that it’s rubbernecking an accident in the opposite lane.
How about the gravity of the entire solar system acting in concert upon it? (Although I doubt the force would be enough at that distance for the observed effect.)
I’d think there’d be dust, small rocks, etc floating around out there that could, over time, slow it down little by little. Though I’d think that’d be elementary and they’d take that into account.
SparrowHawk! Do you know what splattered Citrusel does to a keyboard?
No one would have believed in the firsy years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans to slow down our interplanetary probes.
Plus they need women.
Regards,
Shodan
Oddly enough, that was exactly my thought. It may be that dark matter is “everywhere”, that is, once you get far enough from any stars.
Quick, we need to send out a Deep Space Dark Matter Probe!
It all began, old Ammi said, with the meteorite. Before that time there had been no wild legends at all since the witch trials, and even then these western woods were not feared half so much as the small island in the Miskatonic where the devil held court beside a curious 'lone altar older than the Indians. These were not haunted woods, and their fantastic dusk was never terrible till the strange days. Then there had come that white noontide cloud, that string of explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from the valley far in the wood. And by night all Arkham had heard of the great rock that fell out of the sky and bedded itself in the ground beside the well at the Nahum Gardner place.
There was no explanation for the deceleration? I think I may have been stuck behind the Pioneer spacecraft on my way to work this morning. Was the right blinker on for the whole mission?
Is it possible that solar winds are responsible for a little push that allows for the “constant” velocity we observe in and around our solar system? I’m imagining the solar winds acting as a tailwind for objects leaving the solar system. Is there even been any object that appears to lose velocity going towards the sun, but that picks up velocity going away from the sun ala a comet? Now the probes are farther away from the sun, perhaps the little push from solar winds is reduced and the velocity of the probes has reduced accordingly.
Wouldn’t this be related to the reasons that Voyager probes were slowing down? I thought they speculated that this had something to do with termination shock as the probes were approaching the edge of the heliosphere. I recall reading something about that a few months back.
Ah, here it is.
I understand that. However, for there to be a constant expected position loss, that implies error in expected velocity. If there were really deceleration, as the article says, wouldn’t the expected position loss become greater every year?
I know what Sputnik was, but what is sputniking?
clearly a very bad pun attempt on “sputtering”.
nevermind -
Clearly they forgot to reroute main power through the impulse engines so that a tachyon beam could be fired from the deflector array.
Maybe the probe got put on a treadmill?
Either that, Antinor01, or the Tholean’s are up to their “web” tricks again…
Some chucklehead in NASA is forgetting to convert meters to feet again.
Maybe its cautiously slowing down as it enters the vast and unknown interstellar darkness; space probes have feelings too, you know?. Dont be too hard on him, its trying hard to do its best and if we can show some emotional support I`m sure Pioneer will gather his courage and keep going.
“Those That Watch” (TTW) have been following the probe in their 23,579BC Sol cruiser at a discrete distance (3000 miles), and we’re just measuring ‘their’ position, rather than the probes.
TTW became interested after the last planetary flyby, when it seemed to veer off on a course that suspiciously looked like the way TTW would have taken back to their place.
TTW’s pilot, however, is a bit of a drunkard, and he tends to nod off a bit at the wheel. He does his best, but over time, he’s slowed down just a bit.
Additionally the minor gravity affect from TTW’s Sol cruiser’s mass has tended to slow the probe a bit.
It’s slowing down because it is reaching the end of its power cord. Eventually it will rebound and come back to Earth.