Laws of Physics May Need an Overhaul

The laws of physics just might be broken. Scientists have detected gravity-defying behavior from spacecrafts flung around the Earth, the Economist reports. Five different spacecrafts picked up speed at a pace deviating,ever so slightly, from the laws created by Newton and Einstein. After laborious calculations, astronomers have created a formula to predict the phenomenon. If it holds up, it means that our laws of gravity need major revision.

The cause of such strange behavior, first noted by a Pasadena lab during the 1990 Galileo mission to Jupiter, remains a mystery. It's possible that something within the current laws can explain it, but John Anderson and his Jet Propulsion Lab colleagues have carefully ruled out conventional explanations and errors such as computer bugs.   (More science stories.)