launched in 1972 and 1973 respectively the pioneer 10 and 11 missions were two of the most fruitful missions ever carried out by the united states space program. they hold many firsts among their impressive list of accomplishments. first spacecraft to jupiter. first spacecraft to saturn. between them they carried out a long list of never before possible experiments, collecting literally piles of new data on the two planets, as well as some of jupiter’s moons. they went on to capture two more important distinctions. first man made objects to leave our solar system, and for a long while, they were the earth made objects furthest away from earth. with that eventual distinction in mind the designers attached a sort of post card to the pioneer spacecraft. namely the now famous “pioneer plaque” (which you can see in full by clicking the thumbnail). now over 30 years after their launch, having finally lost both signals, both spacecraft continue to contribute to humanities understanding. in particular the understanding that we don’t know shit.

essentially what scientist have found, as time has passed, is that the pioneer spacecraft are not where they ought to be, that they have in fact slowed down significantly. this has been called the pioneer anomaly, and it may turn out the be the most pronounced case of 1 step forward 2 steps back ever recorded. from a space.com article on the subject:

scientists are quick to suggest the pioneer anomaly, as they call it, is probably caused by the space probes themselves, perhaps emitting heat or gas. but the possibilities have been tested and modeled and penciled out, and so far they don’t add up. which leaves open staggering possibilities that would force wholesale reprinting of all physics books (namely)

1- invisible dark matter is tugging at the probes

2- other dimensions create small forces we don’t understand

3- gravity works differently than we think

did you catch that last one? “gravity works differently than we think.” i love that one. that’s what prompted me to post about the pioneer spacecraft in the first place. the idea that our conception of gravity, something every single one of us takes for granted, something so ingrained as to seem utterly unquestionable at this point, might in fact be, well, wrong… hahahaha. love it. if you notice the first two options on that list deal with things the existence of which we can not really prove. looking at it that way, this list really says:

1- uh, maybe some invisible, impossible to measure stuff we can’t possibly understand? or

2- we don’t understand gravity.

which actually, if you distill it further really reads:

1- we don’t understand any of it.

the article at space.com says new missions are being proposed to figure out whether, in fact, it’s a case of “wow! something new we can try and figure out” or “crap! we thought we had that figured out. guess not.”

scientists have been aware of the anomaly for a decade or so, and are still trying to wrap their heads around it. in the meantime we can all just wait for some other civilization out there to scoop up one of the pioneer’s plaques and set about trying to figure out:

1- what the fuck does this mean?! or

2- hahahaha! who are these extremely silly creatures?

you may think that i’m being needlessly hard on humanity for our intellectual shortcomings. you may say, “hey man! of course we don’t understand everything! but we’re getting there! 100 years ago we didn’t even have weird, hard to decipher plaques floating through space, let alone data from outside our solar system to show us things need further inquiry!!!!” i’d have to say, “chill out. i agree totally. i just wanted to point out an interesting article i’d read. sheesh.” in any case check out this diagram of pioneer 10 i dug up and tell me, was this created by a race that ought to be so smug as to think they understand much of anything, let alone physics on a cosmic scale?