"Sadly, if Dr. Carlip told you the above example, then you are both absolutely wrong. Mercury's orbital precession was known when there was *only* Newtonian physics, long before the General Relativity Theory, much less Special Relativity came into our knowlege." Again you are wrong. The phenomenon was known but Newtonian mechanics could provide no explanation of it.
If you think otherwise, please post the Newtonian explanation here. We'd all be interested to see it.
The world was in an uproar when Einstein's predictions were shown to match the actual measured precession.
And Dr. Carlip did not tell me this.
--Boris
"Sadly, if Dr. Carlip told you the above example, then you are both absolutely wrong. Mercury's orbital precession was known when there was *only* Newtonian physics, long before the General Relativity Theory, much less Special Relativity came into our knowlege." - Southack
"Again you are wrong. The phenomenon was known but Newtonian mechanics could provide no explanation of it. If you think otherwise, please post the Newtonian explanation here. We'd all be interested to see it. The world was in an uproar when Einstein's predictions were shown to match the actual measured precession. And Dr. Carlip did not tell me this."
It's good that Carlip didn't tell you any of the above, as it would only have made him as wrong as you (though he probably tosses around fewer ad hominems). Mercury's orbital precession was known *prior* to General Relativity, so GR wasn't required to solve that planetary dillema, QED.
Likewise, other such astral issues may very well be solved *without* GR.
this might be useful:
As seen from Earth the precession of Mercury's orbit is measured to be 5600 seconds of arc per century (one second of arc=1/3600 degrees). Newton's equations, taking into account all the effects from the other planets (as well as a very slight deformation of the sun due to its rotation) and the fact that the Earth is not an inertial frame of reference, predicts a precession of 5557 seconds of arc per century. There is a discrepancy of 43 seconds of arc per century.This discrepancy cannot be accounted for using Newton's formalism. Many ad-hoc fixes were devised (such as assuming there was a certain amount of dust between the Sun and Mercury) but none were consistent with other observations (for example, no evidence of dust was found when the region between Mercury and the Sun was carefully scrutinized). In contrast, Einstein was able to predict, without any adjustments whatsoever, that the orbit of Mercury should precess by an extra 43 seconds of arc per century should the General Theory of Relativity be correct.
[emphasis added]
from:
http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node98.html