One of my occasional topics here is science, since I’ve got a lot of geek blood in me. Lately I’ve given politics and the economy a lot of attention, given the mortgage crisis, oil and food prices skyrocketing, businesses in recession, and the upcoming presidential election. But there’s still a lot of interesting stuff going on in the scientific field; more and more every day, really. So let’s take a look at an interesting little problem that physicists are thinking about right now that could possibly “rock the foundation” of Einstein’s General and Special Relativity. (Caveat: it could also turn out to be nothing, or nothing much; in fact, that’s what most of the experts think.)

Over the past 20 years or so, the USA has launched a handful of inter-planetary space probes meant to explore Saturn or some comet or asteroid way out there. Problem is, our rockets are limited in their size and power, so you can only make these space probes so big. There’s a whole lot of different cameras and sensors and radar and computers and other stuff that the scientists would like to put on these spacecraft, but at some point it gets too heavy. But there’s a little trick that helps to fling these things out towards the edge of the solar system, thus allowing them a few more pounds. That trick is the “planetary fly-by”; the space probe is set on just the right course so as to fly close to another planet for a little while, say Venus or even the Earth itself, and thus get accelerated by the planet’s gravity and orbital motion. It’s kind of like the old trick about tying a string around a rock and twirrling it around a few times before releasing it. This all takes many months longer versus a more direct path to the destination. But it also allows our scientists to put more experimental stuff and better communications gear into the space probe. Some space missions that have done this include the Cassini to Saturn, the Galileo to Jupiter, the MESSENGER to Mercury, the NEAR to an asteroid, and the Rosetta to Comet 67P.

Well, as you might guess, our space agency continuously tracks the progress of these space ships by various means, including the use of radar. (Yes, they can use radar to track stuff out past Jupiter just about as well as they can track airplanes coming into LaGuardia or O’Hare Airport). And given the standard Newtownian and Einsteinian equations governing force and mass and gravity, they always know where the ship should be, right down to the microsecond. The interesting thing is this: all of the ships that have done planetary fly-bys have deviated from the plan! They seem to be speeding up too much. Not by very much, not enough to mess up their missions. But just enough to be detected. And even worse, the deviation wasn’t always the same; the MESSENGER hardly sped up at all. Space scientists found that the latitudinal angle of approach and angle of getaway from the planet determined just how much unexplained acceleration resulted. (The greater the difference in such “latitude declanation”, the bigger the effect).

Also, the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions from the 1970s also showed some unexpected speed deviation, although not directly as a result of a planetary fly-by. Their deviation was a continual slow-down (a deceleration) experienced as they got past Jupiter (which they did in fact “flyby”). It’s a head-scratcher as to whether these “Pioneer effects” have anything to do with the flyby effect.

A recent study by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory determined that this effect cannot be explained away by something fairly simple, e.g. some little quirk in the space ships or in the radar measuring devices; nor by more theoretical stuff like distortions to timespace expected from the planet’s rotation. So, the mystery goes on. It all might still turn out to be nothing all that interesting. But on the other side of the coin, it also might have something to do with the “dark energy” that not long ago was found to be accelerating every galaxy in the Universe away from each other. In other words, it might mean — no guarantee — that another revolution in the laws of space and time and gravity and force is on the horizon. Einstein was a big improvement over Newton, just as Newton was an infinite improvement over whatever was known before him about physics. However, science doesn’t stop. One day, even Einstein’s incredible work will be seen to be “partly correct”.

Science is ultimately a human institution, one with many faults. Scientists have egos and engage in hubris. They overestimate themselves, dabble in metaphysics, and sometimes think they know it all. And they don’t always think about the societal effects of what they come up with (although arguably that’s not their job). But when they knuckle down and get to work, i.e. continually improving what they know, discovering what they don’t yet know, and throwing out what they thought they knew but was wrong, it’s a beautiful thing!

P.S., not that humor is a big part of my blog either, but I heard a strange poem on the local PBS station this morning. It was a take-off of a Shakespearian monarchy tale – an Olde English conversation between the “Burger King” and one of his knights, regarding the intrigue of trans fats. Here’s an audio link; click on the start button for “The Patron Saint of Trans Fat”, near the bottom of the page. It’s worth a chuckle, I think.