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Theory of relativity (view source)
Revision as of 22:21, September 26, 2021
, 22:21, September 26, 2021→Precession of the orbit of Mercury
:These error bars, and that of the general relativity prediction, all overlap.
:These error bars, and that of the general relativity prediction, all overlap.
:No Nobel Prize was was awarded for this.
There are at least 4 criteria that can be used for evaluating whether a manifestation of precession makes a good test:
#Does it precess?
#Does it decay?
#Does it radiate?
#Is it free of "noise" confounding the observations?
The precession of Mercury satisfies #1, but it scores badly on #4, and totally fails #2 and #3. The precession is actually quite small, and several decades of observation went into it. Observing #2 and #3 are out of the question, though it has recently become possible to measure these for other phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars.
Also, Mercury does not score well on #4. The calculated precession from relativity is 43 arcseconds per (Earth) century, in the context of 5600 arcseconds per century of total precession. For most of the 20th century, the precession of Mercury, feeble and noisy as it was, was all anyone had to go on. And there are questions about the various noise signals. The vast bulk of the noise is the gravitational tugs from other planets (about 532 arcseconds), 0.03 arcseconds from solar oblatenes, 0.002 arcseconds from Lense-Thirring precession (a very subtle relativistic effect).
People have argued at great length (often here at Conservapedia) over the total precession discrepancy (about 1 arcsecond) and relativity's role in it, but in fact there are other phenomena that are vastly better suited to testing Einsteinian gravity. These include black holes in galactic centers, quasars, neutron stars, and other black holes.
===The Shapiro Effect===
===The Shapiro Effect===