Bashed and Bruised...

I just took up squash the other week... only played two times, but I'm enjoying it. My shoulders and arms probably would disagree with me on that one. I have yet to master the art of getting to the ball (when it's near the wall), hitting it, and then NOT crashing into the wall. What's that old saying?... no pain - no gain.

Figured I'd throw some science news in here too, since y'all are probably tired of me whining about getting beat up in sports, or letting in 10 goals in hockey :)

The "Pioneer Anomaly" is causing enough stir that there may be a deep-space mission to investigate it. This anomaly refers to weird effects that have been happening to the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. These two spacecraft were launched back in 1972/73 and were sent to investigate Jupiter and Saturn. Pioneer 10 became the first manmade object to leave our solar system (pretty cool), and is now about 70 AU away from us (1 AU is the distance from the sun to earth, so that's about 9 light-hours away (10.5 tera meters). Ever since these spacecraft were 20 AU away from earth, there has been a persistent doppler shift in the signals they send to earth. This doppler effect can not be explained by known factors (ie. planetary interactions, fuel leaks, etc.). So, some physicists are postulating that it may be due to some new physics. Maybe dark matter at the edge of the solar system, or a new type of force that we don't know about.
Interested? Read on for more info at: http://www.nature.com/physics/ (free reg required).