http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (Phys.org)—Former President Bill Clinton recently expressed his support for interstellar travel at the 100 Year Spaceship Symposium, an international event advocating for human expansion into other star systems. Interstellar travel will depend upon extremely precise measurements of every factor involved in the mission. The knowledge of those factors may be improved by the solution a University of Missouri researcher found to a puzzle that has stumped astrophysicists for decades. http://phys.org/news269018335.html Physics Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:19:10 EST news269018335 (Phys.org) -- The unexpected slowing of NASA’s Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft – the so-called “Pioneer Anomaly” – turns out to be due to the slight, but detectable effect of heat pushing back on the spacecraft, according to a recent paper. The heat emanates from electrical current flowing through instruments and the thermoelectric power supply. The results were published on June 12 in the journal Physical Review Letters. http://phys.org/news261804701.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:31:57 EST news261804701 (Phys.org) -- Back in the early 70’s NASA launched two exploratory spacecraft, Pioneer 10 and 11. Their missions were to gather information about the solar system as they made their way through it by flying farther and farther from the sun, until they eventually left altogether. Though neither craft has been heard from since 2003, both have confounded scientists since it was discovered in the 80’s that they were not accelerating at the rate that physicists had predicted, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Pioneer anomaly. Now it appears a small team of dedicated researchers has figured out what is going on, and as they explain in their paper uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, it’s due to nothing more than the way the propulsion system onboard does its job. http://phys.org/news253967015.html Physics Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:23:50 EST news253967015 Portuguese physicists report that they have identified the unknown force whose influence on outward bound interplanetary space probes has puzzled scientists since 1998. http://phys.org/news223812481.html Physics Thu, 05 May 2011 11:08:29 EST news223812481 (PhysOrg.com) -- Portuguese physicists might have finally solved the decades old mystery of why the Pioneer probes, launched in the early 70’s, haven’t been decelerating from the Sun’s gravitational pull at the rate expected; it seems it might be something as mundane as adding in the tiny forces that occur when minute traces of heat from the plutonium on board the probes bounce off their receiving dishes, creating a counterforce, which in turn, causes the craft to slow; if ever so slightly. http://phys.org/news223117772.html Physics Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:10:04 EST news223117772