2002/11/30 by Antonio Fernández Rañada, Antonio F. Ranada · 15 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Acceleration #Adiabatic process #Classical mechanics #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark energy #Gravitation #Gravitational acceleration #Metric expansion of space #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum #Quantum fluctuation #Quantum mechanics #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #Theoretical physics #Uncertainty principle #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/epl/i2003-00587-x
published in Europhysics Letters (EPL) 63(5), 653-659 (Institute of Physics) · 11 pages, no figures
arxiv created 2003/06/25 · openalex publication_date 2003/09/01 · arxiv updated 2010/12/17 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
It is shown that the same phenomenological Newtonian model recently proposed, which accounts for the cosmological evolution of the fine-structure constant, suggests furthermore an explanation of the unmodelled acceleration a P ≃ 8.5 × 10 −10 m/s 2 of the Pioneer 10/11 spaceships reported by Anderson et al. in 1998. In the view presented here, the permittivity and permeability of the empty space are decreasing adiabatically, and the light is accelerating therefore, as a consequence of the progressive attenuation of the quantum vacuum due to the combined effect of its gravitational interaction with all the expanding universe and the fourth Heisenberg relation. It is argued that the spaceships might not have any extra acceleration (but would follow instead the unchanged Newton laws), the observed effect being due to an adiabatic acceleration of the light equal to a P , which has the same observational radio signature as the anomalous acceleration of the Pioneers.