Machines Like Us

The evidence is growing that small objects in hyperbolic curves don't obey the known laws of physics. Although the cause is unknown, a likely explanation is that something in the laws of gravity needs radical revision.

In 1990 mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which operates America's unmanned interplanetary space probes, noticed something odd happen to a Jupiter-bound craft, called Galileo. As it was flung around the Earth in what is known as a slingshot manoeuvre (designed to speed it on its way to the outer solar system), Galileo picked up more velocity than expected. Not much. Four millimetres a second, to be precise. But well within the range that can reliably be detected. It was as though an extra force beyond mere gravity was tugging at it from the direction of the sun.

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