There is so much going on in space that we just don't understand. I think that we have just begun to find out what that is, I guess that we can say that we are just beginning to scratch the surface. It makes me wonder what we are going to find out, after we have been out there for awhile? We don't even understand our own earth in it's entirety. We have just taken baby steps into space and we have already found a lot of things that we don't understand. One really strange thing that hits very close to home, is a phenomena that is not understood by anyone, including NASA. When space probes are launched and reach a certain area near the Earth, they either slow down or speed up, seemingly for no reason at all. NASA has studied six spacecraft so far, that have been effected by this phenomena. They have found that five craft have shown these strange abnormalities. All five have either slowed down or sped up, while passing the earth. At this point in time, NASA knows no more about this than you or I. Since this is the state of things right now, I would hazard some guesses. The earth is coved with lay lines. These lines supposedly cross at certain points on earth and many people think that at these points gravity is inconsistent, but for some reason it doesn't show up on any instruments. Stepping back from this problem and trying to look at things logically, it seems that it can't be gravity that is different at these areas, or we would notice it. It may be an unknown component of gravity that we don't know about yet, that is either more powerful or less powerful at these points. Taking this a step further, it would be interesting to note if the space probes that were effected by some unknown force near the earth, were over any lay lines.

NASA studied six of it's craft. Galileo I and II, NEAR, Rosetta, Cassini and MESSENGER. . Five of these six craft had exhibited the strange phenomena, when they got near the earth. They either sped up, or slowed down unexpectedly. How do people at NASA feel about this? "I am feeling both humble and perplexed by this," replied an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA has decided that they are going to try and find out what is going on and I for one hope that they do. They are going to have the Rosetta spacecraft fly past the earth and see if they can figure out what is happening. As they say, the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go wrong. Actually Robbie Burns said it a little differently, but it meant the same. That means that even though you plan things out, things may not turn out the way you think. It would just be our luck, that the Rosetta spacecraft will fly by the earth unaffected. I know that this is the kind of thing that always happens to me in certain situations. It is like the time when I was having car trouble, but every time I took the car to the mechanic it would run perfectly, but at home the car would continuously stall out. Let's hope that NASA has better luck than I do. If the craft is slowed down or accelerates, then it is time to examine the contents of each spacecraft to see if there is similar equipment on the ones that speed up or the ones that slow down or both.

Maybe gravity, or it's constituents have nothing to do at all with the spacecraft events. Maybe the solar wind has something to do with it? The solar wind comes from emissions from the sun. Maybe it changed from slightly denser and slower to slightly thinner and faster in certain areas and we are not aware of that yet? Who knows what could cause this, it might even be some sort of reaction to the type of fuel used, or even the very composition of the material that composes the space probe itself? What if it is something even more exotic than this? We might even be talking about time and space or dimensions. The problem seems to be very complex and what is needed is some very ingenious detective work. Will this turn out to be a problem for physicists, or engineers? Maybe some guy or gal will just notice something that no one else has caught and solve the entire problem. It might even turn out to be something that is so simple that everyone will say, gee why didn't I think of that? Lastly, the measuring instruments must be checked very closely for errors.

Cassini Spacecraft

There is a theory that gravity waves exist in the universe. This hasn't been proved yet, but the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's physics building has put their money where their collective mouths are? The have built a huge computer complex, that has the sole purpose of trying to collect evidence of a gravity wave. Maybe these waves do exist and that is what is effecting our spacecraft? The university has networked a large amount of computers to form a supercomputer and they have named it Nemo. The cost of this setup must have been enormous. Gravitational waves were predicted a long time ago. To be more precise, Einstein predicted them in 1916 and mankind has been trying to prove that they actually exist ever since, without much success I might add. That was about ninety-two years ago. Things have changed since then, we have made this huge technological leap since then and the rate of increase of technological advancement is speeding along ever faster and faster. Even at the point it is now, it is enabling us to actually search for these waves. This is the first time in history that we might have the means to find them. The consensus of opinion is that these waves exist and that they are very weak by the time they get near us. This is not to say that they are weak when they first start out, we just don't know. Other states and countries have also begun to search for these waves and they are using some very sophisticated equipment. An international effort has developed and scientists are hot to find these waves. Could it be that these waves might turn out to be a source of propulsion in the future?

You have to wonder what would the source of these gravity waves be? Would they come from stars? Stars do have enormous gravity. We have to wonder however, if even the closest star could have a gravity wave that would reach us here? What about neutron stars, they even have far more powerful gravity fields? Could a neutron star put out a gravity wave that was so strong it could reach us? This is unknown. Since we don't know for sure that these waves even exist, we don't know if they dissipate over huge distances, even though we highly suspect that they do. As I said before, if we can prove that they exist, can we use them for propulsion? When people first started sailing on the oceans of the world, they discovered that there were currents. If a ship was able to get into these currents and head in the same direction, they were able to travel much faster. Maybe there are gravity waves in space and maybe they act like currents and if we can get our spacecraft into one of these waves, it might push the craft along at faster speeds, without it having to use fuel? Could space be a lot like the ocean? Maybe.

Some day we might even be able to use things like black holes, if they truly exist, to travel around the universe. Maybe we will be able to lock on to the gravity waves and use them to travel around. How fast could we travel this way? Probably almost at the speed of light, but I am not sure. Even at that speed, it is far too slow to travel around the universe. We would just about have enough speed to travel around the distant parts of our solar system. We not only need speed, we need speeds that are so fast that they boggle the mind and yet Einstein said that we can't even reach light speed. This is why you see all these theories about bending space and time, because scientists believe Einstein was right and there is no direct way to go faster than light speed. I would like to remind people that the same thing was said about breaking the sound barrier, but look how far we have gotten today. We are looking at craft that can travel up to twenty-two times the speed of sound. I am talking about the X Planes that use a scram jet engine. We have already gotten one up to about twelve times the speed of sound and the potential for higher speed is there.

Why are our spacecraft acting so strangely? We just might find out soon. When we do find out, we may discover some useful things that we didn't know about space, things that just might improve the way we get around out there.