Can "Newton" explain the perihelion of mercury ,today , or is GR the only way .?
Is GR the only way, even today, to explain the perihelion of Mercury ,or is it simply a more efficient ,and developed way, of dealing with such gravitational effects, compared to Newtonian Mechanics?
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answers:
say: i believe that before general relativity, astronomers tried suggesting other nearby bodies, including some yet to be discovered, were providing gravitational tugs to perturb mercury's orbit. none of those hypotheses panned out and general relativity provided the only explanation which stood up to observation.
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Jeffrey K say: The precession of the perihelion of Mercury is entirely a general relativity effect. There is no Newtonian physics way to account for it.
In Newton mechanics, orbits form closed curves, like circles or ellipses. In gen relativity, the orbits do not make closed curves. Mercury's orbit is not quite a closed ellipse.
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say: Newtonian physics is wrong about Mercury. GR is right.
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Ronald 7 say: There have been many explanations
But Mercury is Mercury
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YKhan say: Newton's laws can explain Mercury's orbit over the course of just one orbit, just fine. It's the perturbations that it can't explain well over the course of multiple orbits, which end up making Mercury's orbit precess around from orbit to orbit. There is a sideways component of the orbital acceleration that Newton can't explain. As far as Newton is concerned, gravity should only have lines of force radially, not tangentially. That works perfectly if the speed of light (and gravity) were infinite, but with a limited speed of light, it takes time for gravity to reach between objects, and by the time the the gravitational force reaches the object, it starts coming at it from non-radial-only direction. The force of gravity is sort of bent in from a different direction.
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MysteryGuy say: No. Not with accurate precision anyway. The reason for that is because Newton took speed to be constant however it is not, it can accelerate and decelerate. Einstein special relativity was incomplete again because he took speed to be constant. With general relativity, acceleration is used. This perfectly describe the motion of Mercury and any other big object. I purposely say big because even Einstein theories go out of the window on micro scales. (There where Quantum physics, probability and chance take over )
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neb say: Newton explains away most of the precession of mercury’s orbit, e.g., effects of other planets, etc. The Newtonian corrections don’t need general relativity since general relativity reduces to Newton for weak fields and low velocities. The small remaining portion of the precession cannot be derived from Newton’s laws, but is strictly relativistic.
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Starrysky say: Continued observations uphold the predictions of general relativity and gravitational effects beyond what Newtonian equations account for. Has held true for a century. Maybe there might be a further refinement or even another whole new idea someday. But Einstein seems to be right so far, and good enough for now.
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D g say: the reason I have read is that the gravitational effects of the sun at that close to the sun changes the space time curve and therefore things dont act in a newtonian way anymore..
there is no other way to account for gravitational effects without general relativity
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Simon say: indeed
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CarolOklaNola say: No. Classical Galilean and Newtonian mechanics does NOT explain the precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit. The planet Vulcan dies NOT exist. Vulcan was the classical mechanical explanation for the precession, LONG BEFORE Star Trek TOS.
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