Comment Re:Bullshit Flag (Score 1) 247
I agree, this is likely a mistake. Most grand new discoveries fizzle when peers start falsifying (as in 'to test and prove false') them.
Having said that, a matter type can be imagined whose 'drag' on GPS sats would be so rare and trivial as to be mistaken for part of the drag that near-atmospheric objects feel. Neutrinos fit this example. All we need here are massive nonreactive slow cloudy fat (but I repeat myself) particles that do gravitationally interact but don't bump into each other, don't coalesce, etc. Weird weird weird.
The possibility of a cloud or ring or shell that increased gravity is also physically **possible**. That's just calculus. If memory serves, a ring would have asymmetries that would affect the orbital dynamics of anything traveling orthogonal to the ring, so that can be tested quickly (and it's absence in 60 insanely predictable years of orbital dynamics indicates it can be ruled out). Since the force inside a shell or uniform cloud would be zero ( http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mechanics/sphshell2.html#wtls ), we probably would have noticed this as a rather significant blip/bending of trajectories during space flight. Again, without reading TQA, I'm not seeing much hope.
This sounds way too much like ether and phlogiston.
But don't just say 'it can't be'; that's dogma. Instead, take five, and go to work defining how one would confirm or falsify this idea. I'd dig up old trajectory/force data from NASA. And FFS, TAKE A MOMENT to savor how fun scientific research would become again if it turns out to be true.