In response to my recent plea for questions for Planetary Radio, I got this one, mentioning an event I hadn't been aware of.Here's the Science article he refers to.

Does anybody else know some other examples of spectacularly successful predictions that were actually published by researchers? (Lots of people speculate, but I think it's probably rarer to get this stuff past peer review.) And, for fairness, what about spectacularly unsuccessful predictions?

--Emily

On the errant-prediction end, the first thing that comes to my mind are the many models of planetary system accretion, which I always thought were quite cool (the TV series Cosmos showed some sample output) that never predicted hot Jupiters.

But there are so many examples, we could focus just on the most flagrant. Just consider what was said about Venus before anyone peeked beneath the clouds. Jungle? Oceans?

Famously, Thomas Gold predicted that a lunar lander might sink into powdery dust, never to be seen again. Boy, was Mrs. Armstrong glad he was wrong.

Pre-spaceflight, many including Patrick Moore predicted that the Moon's craters would prove to be volcanic in origin.

An epic success would be the prediction of Neptune's existence. It depends on how impressed you want to be. Given enough evidence, nothing is surprising. Was the case for Neptune on the basis of perturbation so solid that predicting its existence was actually unimpressive?

The return of Halley's Comet is a similar case. Halley saw the pattern in the data, and I'm sure there was plenty of noise (after all, it isn't the only comet). It was a bold and falsifiable prediction that proved to be valid.

I think Ralph Lorenz among others described certain aspects of Titan pretty accurately when all we had were poor IR global maps and lots of indirect measurements.

I thought everyone knew about the Io volcanoes being predicted, and that prediction being published, before the Voyager 1 flyby.

But then I suppose that just goes to show two things. One, people tend to assume that the things they know are common knowledge. Two, that I'm getting older than some people, and was already an adult with an avid interest in these things at the time that Voyager was launched. I was reading everything I could get my hands on in those days (and still am), and the Io story was a antecdote that people loved to tell.

Another one that I think is common knowledge, but may not be, is that Carl Sagan correctly predicted that the seasonal changes in albedo on Mars was due to the dust storms moving dust around on the Martian surface. I'm not clear if he thought the dust was light or dark, if he thought the dust was dark then he had the prediction somewhat backwards (I think that the reddish dust gets blown off the underlying rock and bedrock, exposing a darker grayish surface).

I think he also predicted that the Venus surface would turn out to be very hot, precluding the ideas of oceans and jungles.

In both cases I beleive he (and possibly collaborators) published these predictions.

I'm not so old that I remember the Mars and Venus results being published. I may have been alive at the time, but was still watching saturday morning cartoons and learning to ride a bicycle.

On the "boy were we wrong" side of things, much more recently there is the case of asteroid regolith. I think that before we got to Eros it was commonly thought that for the most part asteroids as small as Eros could not hold onto soil and boulders after impacts... because the gravity was so low that the debris would all be flung out at higher than escape velocity. Turned out that NEAR found lots of debris and soils.

Even after that, it was felt that REALLY small asteroids, like say Itakowa, could not hold onto small rubble, so it would be just one large fragrment left over from some earlier larger asteroid breakup.

Oops. Turns out Itakowa was a classic flying rubble pile with boulders ranging in size from 50 odd meters, down to small pebbles. So much for thinking that the Hayabusa mission was heading towards an unremarkable target.

Hannes Alfven's predictions of both the solar and galactic Electromagnetic fields - big surprises

From His Nobel Prize Biography:
http://www.alfvenlab.kth.se/hannes.html



It is also worth mentioning that I don't know of anyone who successfully predicted what would happen when Deep Impact ploughed into Tempel 1.

Another surprise; the rocky strata Haybusa wondered into on 'It is quick'.

The twisted rings of Saturn were a big surprise...does anyone know if anyone predicted this?

That raises the question of whether reasonable conclusions from analysis of radiotelescope observations are "predictions." Like the Van Allen Belts were discovered... not predicted, at least by Van Allen.

I think we're looking here for predictions that are not the direct inference of observation. Like the Kuiper Belt or the Oort cloud. And of course there are the predictions that aren't exactly controversial, like "There will be Neptunian Trojan Asteroids." But then again, there are the failed predictions based on observation like Vulcan, Nemesis, and Planet X.

I believe that in 1955 the then British Astronomer Royal went on record as saying that space travel was "utter bilge". Two years later . . . .
Maybe someone can confirm the details.

Oh yes, and Fred Hoyle predicted that the Big Bang theory (his coining) was doomed to fail. Successful or unsuccessful? I don't know, but spectacular either way!

Jonathan Swift's prediction in "Voyage to Laputa" (1726) that Mars had two close in moons was definitely a prediction not based on any actual data.

Did that pass peer review then?

I remember reading that there had been a prediction in (I think) Astronomy Magazine to the effect that Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 would slip into the atmosphere of Jupiter without any noticeable commotion.

I believe I read this in "Shoemaker by Levy."

TTT

The physical justification for the existence of a solar wind + the solar wind spiral by Eugene Parker. Rejected twice by peer review journals (solar wind):

Eugene Parker realised that the heat flowing from the Sun in Chapman's model and the comet tail blowing away from the Sun in Biermann's hypothesis had to be the result of the same phenomenon, which he termed the "solar wind".[4][5] Parker showed that even though the Sun's corona is strongly attracted by solar gravity, it is such a good conductor of heat that it is still very hot at large distances. Since gravity weakens as distance from the Sun increases, the outer coronal atmosphere escapes supersonically into interstellar space. Furthermore, Parker was the first person to notice that the weakening effect of the gravity has the same effect on hydrodynamic flow as a de Laval nozzle: it incites a transition from subsonic to supersonic flow[6]

Opposition to Parker's hypothesis on the solar wind was strong. The paper he submitted to the Astrophysical Journal in 1958 was rejected by two reviewers. It was saved by the editor Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (who later received the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics).

In January 1959, the first ever direct observations and measurements of strength of the solar wind were made by the Soviet satellite Luna 1. However, the acceleration of the fast wind is still not understood and cannot be fully explained by Parker's theory. Shortly thereafter, an unambiguous solar wind measurement was performed by Neugebauer and collaborators using the Mariner 2 spacecraft [7].

Jupiter's ring was predicted from Pioneer particles and fields data back in 1976 if memory serves. I don't remember where I read this, possibly in the Voyager 1 special issue of Science (which I do not have at the moment).

Spectacularly incorrect Venus predictions: Oily oceans and jungles.

Incorrect Jupiter predictions: That Io would be the Rosetta stone for deciphering surface ages in the Jovian system due to its rocky composition and as a consequence heavily cratered surface. That the surfaces of Ganymede and Callisto would look very smooth and without craters because these two satellites are composed largely of water ice.

The existence of craters on Mars seemed to come as a total surprise during the Mariner 4 flyby of the planet in 1965, and led to the view that Mars was more Moon-like than Earth-like. But there were some skilled observers using large observatory telescopes that claimed in the 1940's and 1950's to be able to see craters on Mars, among them E.E. Barnard, R.B. Baldwin, C.L. Tombaugh, and E.J. Opik. If my memory serves me well, Steven James O'Meara, whose eyesight is lengendary, claims to be able to see them now; I wouldn't doubt it.

John Sheff
Cambridge, MA

JPL folks were cautioned to be on the look out for moons with moons, and moons with rings during the ramp up to the Voyager flybys.

{I think I saw this on the Nova episode 'Resolution on Saturn', but I might be wrong}


If someday it turns out the Trojanettes (and maybe Hyperion, too) are tidally divested sub satellites, and that the Iapetan equatorial ridge is an orbitally decayed ring system, I would be thinking that was some pretty awesome advice for 1980/1.

Well, hmm -- not only a prediction, but "established fact" well into the 20th century was that space was actually filled with "aether," a gaseous medium that filled the void between the planets and stars.

Also, in the arena of lunar predictions, there are all of the crazy predictions by Spurr and Green, including the idea that the lunar seas were dried-up ocean beds. (As Don Wilhelms put it, the Moon is neither Spurrish or Greenish... .) And, more subtle but just as wrong, there were the predictions by the photogeology team that the Descartes and Cayley formations represented highland volcanics.

-the other Doug

Then there's John Brunner's: "A Report on the Nature of the Lunar Surface"....

Limburger.

Which (see some thread a couple years ago) resulted (I *think* it was references) in a paper published in Science comparing sound velocities in lunar and terrestrial rocks, and terrestrial cheeses.

And of course, there was the prediction that the Venusian atmosphere was so dense that it was thought to be possibly "super-refractive" and would bend light rays to such an extent that a hypothetical observer on the surface would appear to be looking up from the bottom of an immense bowl...

Its fair say that Venera 9 set this crazy idea on its ear!

I think that the "jungle-covered Venus" only briefly appeared in "scientific" works (more pop-science though) at the end of the 1910s and beginning of the 1920s. Scientists were not impressed with the concept, but science-fiction writers took it up and kept running with it right through to the 1950s, occasionally merging it with later (and equally wrong) theories, such as the "seltzer ocean" one. IIRC, the very early problem detected with the jungle Venus notion is that it was predicated upon the assumption that Venus' clouds were water vapor; but spectroscopy failed to show any water whatsoever. The notion of a "young, primitive" Venus similar to Earth's distant past (say the Carboniferous or Jurassic) contrasting with aged, decadent, dried-up, ruinous Mars (representing Earth's future) was too rich in symbolism to pass up.

Not sure whether this counts as a failed prediction or misinterpretation, but I recall that an image of Europa taken during one of the Pioneer flybys was interpreted as showing polar ice caps. I believe I read this in Astronomy magazine (way back when I was in high school), which doesn't count as peer reviewed, yet I'd assume that the story was quoting someone authoritative. I recall the image as pretty blurry, yet showing a distinct brightening at the pole.

Can we count:

"JIMO will be a new type of spacecraft, driven by nuclear-generated ion propulsion."

"And today I'm asking my right-hand man, our able Vice President, Dan Quayle, to lead the National Space Council in determining specifically what's needed for the next round of exploration: the necessary money, manpower, and materials; the feasibility of international cooperation; and develop realistic timetables -- milestones -- along the way. The Space Council will report back to me as soon as possible with concrete recommendations to chart a new and continuing course to the Moon and Mars and beyond."

Maybe we should just stick to the science...

Note that there wasn't a lot of "science" to the study of the planets (besides their orbital properties) prior to 1950. (Some, yes.) The opinions that were being offered were as much WAGs as anything else. Thermal measurements of the visible surfaces and spectroscopy were about all that anyone had going. Asking a scientist then about the properties of Jupiter or Venus was not a lot different than asking a scientist who is going to win a football game.

One of the greatest leaps forward in the history of science was Einstien's theories of Special and General Relativity and the equivilance of mass and energy. His predictions were based on very few observational data. So much of it was based on thought experiments and calculations that it boggles the mind that he ever came up with it. The field was definitely moving in that direction and others would have peiced it together - eventually. But I believe that his efforts advanced the field many decades faster than it would have otherwise. His work was considered nonsence by very smart and respected people, when it first was published. Today it has one of the highest batting averages of any theory predicting the observable universe.

That's all I'm saying...

ed

Relativity (general & special) surely has to stand out as perhaps the most successful set of predictions/theorems in science, period. It's humbling to realize that almost a hundred years later we're still testing its bounds (GP-B, anyone? ) and finding them solid...astonishing.

There should be a partial release of Gravity probe B data in the April APS meeting.

http://einstein.stanford.edu/

The data reduction has proven much more challenging than expected, due unexpected Polhodes in the individual spheres and difficulty figuring out the probes exact position.

Reading between the lines in some of the presentation titles, there is a lot of unexpected variability:


In addition, on Saturday afternoon, two papers related to GP-B will be delivered in Session C12: Experimental Tests of Gravity.

C12.00004: " Lessons Learned from Gravity Probe B for STEP, LISA and other experiments" by GP-B team members Paul Worden and Sasha Buchman

C12.00005: "Proper Motion of the GP-B Guide Star" by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Gp-B guide star tracking team: Irwin Shapiro, Daniel Lebach, Michael Ratner, Norbert Bartel, Ryan Ransom, Michael Bietenholz, Jerusha Lederman, and Jean-Francois Lestrade

On Sunday morning, April 15th, three members of the GP-B team have been invited to give special talks on three aspects of the GP-B program:

H7.00001: "The Gravity Probe B Science Instrument," by GP-B Co-Principal Investigator, John Turneaure

H7.00002: "The Development Challenges of Gravity Probe-B—an ongoing partnership between Physics and Engineering" by GP-B Co-Prinipal Investigator, Bradford Parkinson

H7.00003: "Gravity Probe B Data Analysis Challenges, Insights, and Results" by GP-B Co-Investigator and Chief Scientist, George (Mac) Keiser
Finally, on Sunday afternoon, April 15th, a large part of the GP-B team and associated scientists and engineers will present 22 poster sessions on a host of scientific and technology topics, as listed below.

Session L1: Poster Session II L1.00011: GRAVITATION

L1.00012: "Radio Imaging of the Gravity Probe B Guide Star IM Pegasi" by Michael Bietenholz, Ryan Ransom, Norbert Bartel, Daniel Lebach, Michael Ratner, Irwin Shapiro, Jean-Francois Lestrade

L1.00013: "The 'Core' of the Quasar 3C454.3 as the Extragalactic Reference for the Proper Motion of the Gravity Probe B Guide Star" by Norbert Bartel, Ryan Ransom, Michael Bietenholz, Jerusha Lederman, Daniel Lebach, Michael Ratner, Irwin Shapiro, Leonid Petrov

L1.00014: "Performance of the Gravity Probe B Inertial Reference Telescope" by Suwen Wang, John Goebel, John Lipa John Turneaure

L1.00015: "Gravity Probe B Timing System and Roll Phase Determination" by Jie Li , Jeffery Kolodziejczak

L1.00016: "The Gravity Probe B SQUID Readout Detector" by Barry Muhlfelder, Bruce Clarke, Gregory Gutt, James Lockhart, Ming Luo

L1.00017: "SQUID Control, Temperature Regulation, and Signal Processing Electronics for Gravity Probe B" by James Lockhart, Barry Muhlfelder, Jie Li, Bruce Clarke, Terry McGinnis, Peter Boretsky, Gregory Gutt

L1.00018: "Gravity Probe B Science Instrument Assembly (SIA)" by Saps Buchman, Barry Muhlfelder, John Turneaure

L1.00019: "Polhode Motion of the Gravity Probe-B Gyroscopes" by Michael Dolphin, Alex Silbergleit, Michael Salomon, Paul Worden, Daniel DeBra

L1.00020: "Evidence for Patch Effect Forces on the Gravity Probe B Gyroscopes" by Dale Gill, Saps Buchman

L1.00021: "Gravity Probe B Orbit Determination" by Paul Shestople , Huntington Small


Anybody know what "Patch Effect Forces Are?

I found this in a Google search. Still not clear to me...



Source

ed