THE PIONEER ANOMALY - Casting Doubt on Newton's Theory

Launched in the 1970's, the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes were launched to probe the deeper parts of our solar system.  For all intents and purposes, science has no interest in these probes anymore.  In fact, the last signal we received was from Pioneer 10 in 2003.  These crafts are now nearly 8 million miles away, past Pluto's orbit, and have run out of power to send signals back to Earth.

So what's the big deal?

The big deal is that every year, these probes veer nearly 8000 miles farther away from their intended trajectory and nobody seems to know why.  Keep in mind, before these probes were launched, NASA painstakingly mapped out the predicted courses of the Pioneers, because that's what they do.  They're astrophysicists and rocket scientists.  Every bit of potential gravitational forces the probes might encounter was taken into account when mapping out the path of the probes.

So what is making them veer so significantly off course?

Theories abound ranging from fuel leaks to heat escaping from the plutonium-powered generators.  Some scientists, however, postulate that perhaps this divergence in trajectory is proof that Newton's laws of gravity may not be as universal as we think.  Especially in the void of deep space.

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