In the 1990s, NASA scientists detected a mysterious force that was slowing down the Pioneer spacecraft, the first man-made objects to leave the solar system. The phenomenon baffled scientists. Their observations threatened to upend Einstein’s and Newton’s theories of gravity.

“The Pioneer Anomaly”—how it was discovered in the radio signals from the Pioneers and how scientists came to grasp its cause—reveals how scientists arrive at certainty from messy real-world data. Science is not a list of hard facts, but rather a series of fascinating questions and ideas that are written and re-written over time. Anomalies that emerge when observations defy our expectations have the power to transform our knowledge of the universe by challenging what we know and informing what we have yet to understand.

Join New America NYC and a group of leading researchers and science writers for a conversation on how scientific oddities and gaps in understanding fuel the discoveries of the future.

Featuring…

KONSTANTIN KAKAES

Author, The Pioneer Detectives
Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow, New America Foundation

LUCIANNE WALKOWICZ

Collaborator, NASA’s Kepler Mission
Henry Norris Russell Fellow, Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton

NEAL WEINER

Professor of Physics, New York University

COREY POWELL

Interim Editor, American Scientist
Author, God in the Equation

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