Requiem for Relativity

I've found two objects consistent with Freya, Barbarossa's smaller planet:

B2 (1986) RA 11 16 57.0 Decl -7 53 29.6
C3 (1987) RA 11 18 37.6 Decl -7 54 09.5

If the mass ratios Barbarossa:Frey:Freya are adjusted to 14.3:2.04:1, the center-of-mass path ABCG (four time points, 1954-2007) is straight, and constant-speed to a precision consistent with, assuming an average location on the orbit, eccentricity 0.015. In 1986, Freya appeared 71% as far from Barbarossa as was Frey, and in 1987, 86%.

As assigned, the points are inconsistent with an elliptical orbit for Frey. An alternative to chaotic orbits, is reassigning object "A" as Freya, not Frey. This only slightly affects the overall fit, and gives three Freys & three Freyas, so elliptical orbits can be drawn.

I've looked at 15'x15' regions from 1954, 1986, 1987 and 2007. The regions chosen were, basically, those consistent with a Barbarossa orbit following that mean Jupiter:Saturn resonance point nearest the CMB dipole. The above assignments as Barbarossa, Frey and Freya came from among 2400 possible assignments that I considered (a million different assignments were possible but I considered only the brightest dots as Barbarossa or Frey). There were two more dependent than independent variables to be fit, and these were fit to about one part in 40 (error / region width), i.e., 1 part in 40^2=1600 overall. (The main lack of perfect fit, is due to the uncertain contribution of the unknown 1954 & 2007 Freyas.)

The 2400 choices were far from stochastically independent. A well- or poorly-fitting choice of Barbarossa, Frey & Freya usually implies a good or poor fit by similar choices. In effect there were far fewer than 2400 independent choices.

The J:S resonance points are 72# apart, but the (+) CMB dipole lies on Barbarossa's orbit only 2# behind Barbarossa. Because a causal lag is expected, this gives another factor of 36 in significance.

Additional significance arises from the smoothing of the Pioneer acceleration by subtracting Barbarossa's presumed tidal influence, and from the balance between Barbarossa and planetary tidal (1/r^3) forces at the classic Kuiper Belt.

A week ago I sent another 30 emails to professional astronomers. Of the estimated 200 emails I've sent to professional astronomers about this (over several months' time) only one has responded. The professional astronomer who responded didn't know my main purpose; I'd only asked him a trivial question.

I've read that Neptune first was observed by two "assistants". These would be the sociological equivalents of graduate students today. So, my new strategy will be to email graduate students until one simply looks and finds out whether any of this is or is not there.

(posted in response to an inquiry on another messageboard - JK)

Thanks for your interest! In the north especially, Leo is getting too far west for the best view. Amateur astronomer Steve Riley in California did get, I think, some photos showing these objects with an 11", but the time of year was more favorable. I think he had a southern desert, maybe altitude, location somewhere in S. California without too much light pollution, and he went to a lot of trouble to maximize his magnitude cutoff with the electronic camera (stacking, etc.). If you do make a photo, please send me a "private message"; I'd like to check it! The mass, diameter & albedo aren't really known. That's all theory. So, please look!

The recent image in which I have most confidence is Joan Genebriera's with an 18" and electronic camera on Tenerife, March 25, 2007. I showed it to the president of the Des Moines, Iowa astronomy club. He did not think it was artifact. By comparison with a sky survey, I estimated the J2000 celestial coordinates as RA 11h 26m 22.2s, Decl -09# 04' 59". I theorize that the distance from the sun is 198 AU. Here's how to correct for Earth parallax: Joan's photo was slightly after opposition. Your photo will be slightly before quadrature. The difference in position between opposition & quadrature is 1/198 radian = 57.3/198 # = 0.29# = 17 arcminutes ("retrograde motion" due to Earth's motion). So, it's moved less than that. Also, Barbarossa is, I estimate, moving around the sun about 1/sqrt(198)=1/14 as fast as Earth, which partly compensates. So let's say 10 arcminutes. Find a star chart, find Joan's point (coordinates given above), then move 10 arcminutes west, parallel to the ecliptic, and aim there. That will be good enough if your field is 15'.

Pulsar constancy is said to rule out acceleration of the sun, relative to the pulsars, greater than about the equivalent of a Jupiter at 200 AU (Zakamska et al, Astronomical Journal 130:1939+, 2005; I got this citation from a member of the "Bad Astronomy" messageboard). My mass estimate for Barbarossa might be 10x too high, or the error of this pulsar method might be 10x greater than believed.

The above article cites another, about dynamical detection of dark matter in the solar system (DW Hogg, AJ 101:2274+, 1991). Its Fig. 5 and accompanying text indicate that detection by residual errors in planetary ephemerides would require a Barbarossa at least 0.5 Jupiter mass, likely 2 Jupiter mass or more (maybe much more if there are systematic errors). Detection by "modeling", i.e., a prospective least-squares fit of ephemeris errors, theoretically (no one has done it with modern data) would require 1/3 that mass. (It might be easier simply to look.) Localization of Barbarossa within 1 degree would require at least 1.5 Jupiter mass, likely more than 6 Jupiter mass.

When I think of the aether, I think of something billions of times more "rigid" than steel but I also think of it as a viscoelastic substance. Add to that the idea that half the energy of mass goes to make up the aether of a body. The sun's aether "atmosphere" is centred on the centre of mass of that body but the solar system's as a whole is off centred. Perhaps there's a tiny variation in aether density, which alters the red shift of pulsars downwards.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Stoat</i>
<br />When I think of the aether, I think of something billions of times more "rigid" than steel but I also think of it as a viscoelastic substance. Add to that the idea that half the energy of mass goes to make up the aether of a body. The sun's aether "atmosphere" is centred on the centre of mass of that body but the solar system's as a whole is off centred. Perhaps there's a tiny variation in aether density, which alters the red shift of pulsars downwards.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Thanks for posting. I think these are excellent insights. I might be able to elaborate on them.

- JK

Zamaska & Tremaine (op. cit., Astronomical Journal 130:1939+, 2005) say that pulsar timing shows that the sun is not accelerated by any pull as strong as a brown dwarf (e.g., a 10 Jupiter-mass object at 600 AU). Because they did not always average large numbers of pulsars, their work shows also that (millisecond) pulsars are not accelerated by any pull as strong as a brown dwarf. (They adjusted for the sun's planets, and for the pulsars' known stellar companions. Pulsars rarely have planets; apparently this is, in part, because supernovas destroy planets, at least nearby ones.)

Brown dwarf companions are common, perhaps usual. Only unusually bright and separated brown dwarf companions have been detectable, but even so, a star twelve light-years away has been found to have two of these. Brown dwarfs survive supernovas because they rarely orbit closer than 40 AU (often 1000 AU).

Contemporary theory is, that pulsars lack brown dwarf companions because pulsars receive at birth an impulse or "kick" which causes them to leave behind distant planets and companions, e.g., brown dwarfs. Usually only close stellar companions are durable enough and tightly bound enough to remain. Without such a companion, the pulsar is "ordinary". On the other hand, such a companion eventually ages out of the main sequence, massively interacts with the pulsar, and transforms the pulsar into a "recycled" or even a "millisecond" pulsar.

Let's challenge contemporary theory (see: Lorimer & Kramer, Handbook of Pulsar Astronomy, 2005, p. 30). "Millisecond" pulsars always should keep, the white dwarf companions which while giants provided the mass to spin up those millisecond pulsars. Yet sometimes millisecond pulsars are isolated, i.e., they lack Doppler evidence of any companion whatsoever. The somewhat slower merely "recycled" pulsars whose companions went supernova (providing less total mass though in a much shorter time), often should lack said partners, because of the "kick". Yet seldom are such recycled pulsars without a neutron-star companion.

A possible resolution is, that there is no "kick". The distance-age relationship of pulsars could be interpreted as constant small acceleration rather than constant velocity (see: Lyne & Graham-Smith, Pulsar Astronomy, 2006, Fig. 8.7). The young neutron-star companions of "recycled" pulsars always are there, and almost always are detectable because they tend to be close, at least in perihelion due to their eccentricity. The white dwarf companions of "millisecond" pulsars also always are there, but are undetectable by Doppler shift unless closer than some limiting distance beyond which the Doppler shift does not occur ("ether iceberg"). The limiting distance happens to equal the distance at which escape speed equals "kick" speed, and this limiting distance continually decreases. "Ordinary" pulsars usually have companions but these rarely are close enough to be on the "ether iceberg" and cause any Doppler effect; otherwise they probably would have interacted and the pulsar would have become not ordinary. This amounts to a partial repudiation of orthodox special relativity beyond a certain distance from the star.