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The Pioneer Anomaly
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1764
Small observations can often mean large scale changes in the way we look at the universe. Little semantic things, like whether the Earth goes round the sun or the Sun goes round the Earth.
Small changes in the way we think can have profound impacts on the way we interact, manipulate and predict the world around us.
The Pioneer Anomaly is one such small observation. Since exiting the solar system (inner) and reaching the outer solar system, both the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft (launched in the 70's) have slowed down more than any single factor can account for. Like the diminishing of the mass of the Kilogram, it's a small effect that might have big implications about the way we look at the universe.
Further Reading: Planetary.org, Cosmos Magazine
Kilogram Losing Mass
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1720
Now it's a curious thing, but the official Kilogram (the standard from which the measurement is derived) is losing mass.
Not much, very little in fact, but there's really no good explanation for it. Not yet. Perhaps some of the platinum/iridium used to make it have evaporated, although that doesn't sound like something that metal does. Not over as small a time as 100 years. Maybe it wasn't initially wasn't measured correctly, but I think that possibility would have been raised already and accounted for.
No, it seems that it's gradually losing weight. Minuscule amounts, the weight of a thumbprint, year after year.
Which, as it's so far unexplained, begs some speculation....
Perhaps it's not the mass of the Kilogram that's changing, but the attraction of the mass to the earth (gravity)?
Is it just the Kilogram that's changing, or are all things on earth and throughout the universe losing mass? Is it accelerating? Could it be the expansion of the universe is somehow manifest in the expansion of all things, the weakening of the bonds of matter and hence the universe?
It's a small thing, a small loss, but it raises some possibly big questions.
Further reading: USA TODAY, Science Daily, Wiki on the Kilogram
Anticlimactic
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1929
I can see the postwoman on her rounds and she's stopping at my house.
I try not to get excited, don't want to greet her at the door, instead I count to 60 after hearing the slamming of the mailbox and go outside - it's a delivery notice. There's a parcel at the nearest postal outlet, which, checking google maps, isn't very near at all. Not at all. And so I have to wait until Wednesday and plot a route northwards to try and find it.
But there's a parcel here...
For Sale - Helicopter Pilot's Helmet - $125.00
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: For Sale
- Hits: 3497
For Sale: 1 Helicopter Pilot’s Helmet.
I've tried to sell it before, with limited (no) success. I put it down to a failure in copy writing and the fact that it was probably priced "Too Good To be True". So I've raised the price and re-listed it on Craigslist and Kijiji in the Sports Section. I'm pretty sure it will sell now....
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