Possible Explanations
Possible explanations of the flyby anomaly include:
- Unaccounted Transverse Doppler effect, i.e. the redshift of light source with zero radial and non-zero tangential velocity. However, this cannot explain the similar anomaly in the ranging data.
- A dark matter halo around the Earth.
- A Modification of Inertia resulting from a Hubble-scale Casimir effect (MIHsC).
- The impact of General Relativity, in its weak-field and linearized form yielding gravitoelectric and gravitomagnetic phenomena like frame-dragging, has been investigated as well: it turns out to be unable to account for the flyby anomaly.
- The anomaly may be due to the rotation of the Earth. This rotation induces an azimuthally symmetric gravitational field.
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