Analyze each of the following arguments in terms of antecedents and phenomena to show how they follow
Question:
Analyze each of the following arguments in terms of “antecedents” and “phenomena” to show how they follow the pattern of the method of residues:
For nineteen years space scientists, astronomers, and physicists have been puzzled by what appears to be a mysterious force pulling spacecraft in the direction of the sun. It was first noticed when the trajectories of two outward bound and very distant spacecraft (Pioneer 10 and 11, launched in 1972 and 1973) were carefully analyzed. The trajectories of two later probes (Galileo, launched toward Jupiter in 1989, and Ulysses, launched into polar orbit around the sun) have exhibited the same peculiarities:
They give evidence of a weak force that perturbs their directions and velocities. This force was discovered by adding up the effects of all other known forces acting on the spacecraft and finding that something unexplained was left over.
This force is apparently slowing the outward progress of the spacecraft speeding away from or around the sun—but in contrast to the force of gravity, the strength of this mystery force does not decline proportionally to the inverse square of a spacecraft’s distance from the sun, but instead at a linear rate, which makes it very unlikely that the mystery force is a gravitational effect of the sun.
Calculations were made using two independent methods, and data of different types, taking into account possible errors in the software and the hardware used in the measurements. A host of other possible errors were investigated and accounted for—and after ruling all of these out, a team of physicists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory announced that the mystery remained. This means that some hitherto unknown phenomenon may be at work—what physicists excitedly call “new physics.”
—Reported in Physical Review Letters, September 1998
Step by Step Answer:
Introduction To Logic
ISBN: 9781138500860
15th Edition
Authors: Irving M. Copi, Carl Cohen, Victor Rodych