Pingie: HTTP:: Fly By Anomalies and Dark Matter

HTTP:: Fly By Anomalies and Dark Matter
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The fly-by technique is a very common one for spacecraft, as they depart from the Earth to other destinations inside the solar system, or beyond. In order to limit the amount of fuel these probes carry, they are set on trajectories that bring them very close to a planet or other celestial body, but without being captured by that body's gravitational pull. This considerably increases their speed, without the need for very advanced motors or large fuel sources. However, as spacecraft have flown by the Earth, astronomers have detected a peculiarity that they cannot explain yet. As the probes have flown past our planet, ground-based monitoring networks have picked up step-like changes in velocity, rather than a smooth, constant increase. This has had astronomers scratching their heads for a while, as no clear answer seems to be presenting itself. Last year, Princeton University expert Stephen Adler proposed that the phenomenon might be occurring as probes started slamming into!
particles of dark matter, as they neared the point of closest approach to the Earth. Adler even calculated the hypothetical distribution of these particles, based on measurements collected from the speeds of several spacecraft using the Earth for a fly-by. He determined that a halo of them had to exist around the planet, and offered a theoretical ...
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http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fly-By-Anomalies-and-Dark-Matter-124127.shtml
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