

Mystery Tug on Spacecraft Is Einstein’s ‘I Told You So’  - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/science/mystery-tug-on-pioneer-10-and-11-probes-is-einsteins-i-told-you-so.html?_r=1&ref=science

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ColinWright
In case you're interested in following the history of HN submission on this
topic, here are a few of them:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=165916> Scientists reconstruct the
Pioneer spacecraft anomaly

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1727041> On the vacuum fluctuations,
Pioneer Anomaly and Modified Newtonian Dynamics

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1753491> Pioneer anomaly: Known forces
taken into account, an unexplained force remains

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2009449> The Pioneer Anomaly, a 30-Year-
Old Cosmic Mystery, May Be Resolved At Last

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287486> The Pioneer Anomaly

* * <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2391244> Pioneer Anomaly Solved By 1970s Computer Graphics Technique

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2493060> New theory proposed to explain
Pioneer probe gravitational anomaly

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2787120> NASA Releases New Pioneer
Anomaly Analysis

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2807000> Heat Emission 'Most Likely
Cause' of Pioneer Anomaly

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3861365> Research team appears to solve
the Pioneer anomaly

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865881> Pioneer Anomaly Solved

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4261983> Pioneer anomaly solved

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4271202> New physics takes a back seat to
heat in understanding the Pioneer anomaly

I've put stars in front of the ones with substantial comments.

------
drostie
As the article suggests, the fact that light carries energy and momentum (and
even that those are related by E = p c) were explained by classical
electromagnetic theory before Einstein -- and further the chief effect of
general relativity on the Pioneers in the is just Newtonian gravitation. The
fact that the spacecraft radiates thermally is due to Max Planck. The use of
"Einstein" in this article is highly misleading because the Pioneer anomaly
exists at scales where Einstein's work was not of major importance.

That's not to say that I don't like Einstein; I and every physicist I know
like him. Einstein is great because, though he did bring a bunch of genius to
the field (especially in general relativity), his major discoveries from 1905
are _mostly unoriginal_. That may seem like an odd point to praise, but let me
emphasize that it required a certain bravery to do what he did with them. So
his three 1905 discoveries are "You have to take Ludwig Boltzmann seriously
when he talks about atoms! They would have a length scale, here's how you
would find out about it through diffusion experiments." and "You have to take
Max Planck seriously when he says light comes in lumps! They would only kick
electrons with a certain amount of energy, here's how you would use this to
explain the photoelectric effect." and "You have to take Lorentz transforms
seriously when they say that the speed of light is something we all agree on!
Here's why the equations don't lead to contradictions if we're clear on what
we mean by 'synchronizing clocks' etc."

So he's doing some work with real, cutting insight, but he's doing it on
someone else's intriguing observations, to show that those paradoxical results
must be taken seriously. It's really due to Einstein that we can have a
physics culture where crazy ideas like quantum field theory or string theory
are worked out in detail, to see whether the paradoxical appearance is surface
or deeper.

So we all love Einstein, but this article isn't why. It's not that Einstein
was miraculously right, it's that Einstein was brave enough to take others
seriously.

