{"title":"The advance of Mercury’s perihelion","authors":"Bertrand Berche and Ernesto Medina","doi":"10.1088/1361-6404/ad54a5","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"A very famous ‘test’ of the General Theory of Relativity (GTR) is the advance of Mercury’s perihelion (and of other planets too). To be more precise, this is not a prediction of General Relativity, since the anomaly was known in the 19th century, but no consistent explanation had been found yet at the time GTR was elaborated. Einstein came up with a solution to the problem in 1914. In the case of Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, the effect is more pronounced than for other planets, and observed from Earth; there is an advance of the perihelion of Mercury of about 5550 arc seconds per century (as/cy). Among these, about 5000 are due to the equinox precession (the precise value is 5025.645 as/cy) and about 500 (531.54) to the influence of the external planets. The remaining, about 50 as/cy (42.56), are not understood within Newtonian mechanics. Here, we revisit the problem in some detail for a presentation at the undergraduate level.","PeriodicalId":50480,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Physics","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of Physics","FirstCategoryId":"101","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6404/ad54a5","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
A very famous ‘test’ of the General Theory of Relativity (GTR) is the advance of Mercury’s perihelion (and of other planets too). To be more precise, this is not a prediction of General Relativity, since the anomaly was known in the 19th century, but no consistent explanation had been found yet at the time GTR was elaborated. Einstein came up with a solution to the problem in 1914. In the case of Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, the effect is more pronounced than for other planets, and observed from Earth; there is an advance of the perihelion of Mercury of about 5550 arc seconds per century (as/cy). Among these, about 5000 are due to the equinox precession (the precise value is 5025.645 as/cy) and about 500 (531.54) to the influence of the external planets. The remaining, about 50 as/cy (42.56), are not understood within Newtonian mechanics. Here, we revisit the problem in some detail for a presentation at the undergraduate level.
期刊介绍：
European Journal of Physics is a journal of the European Physical Society and its primary mission is to assist in maintaining and improving the standard of taught physics in universities and other institutes of higher education.
Authors submitting articles must indicate the usefulness of their material to physics education and make clear the level of readership (undergraduate or graduate) for which the article is intended. Submissions that omit this information or which, in the publisher''s opinion, do not contribute to the above mission will not be considered for publication.
To this end, we welcome articles that provide original insights and aim to enhance learning in one or more areas of physics. They should normally include at least one of the following:
Explanations of how contemporary research can inform the understanding of physics at university level: for example, a survey of a research field at a level accessible to students, explaining how it illustrates some general principles.
Original insights into the derivation of results. These should be of some general interest, consisting of more than corrections to textbooks.
Descriptions of novel laboratory exercises illustrating new techniques of general interest. Those based on relatively inexpensive equipment are especially welcome.
Articles of a scholarly or reflective nature that are aimed to be of interest to, and at a level appropriate for, physics students or recent graduates.
Descriptions of successful and original student projects, experimental, theoretical or computational.
Discussions of the history, philosophy and epistemology of physics, at a level accessible to physics students and teachers.
Reports of new developments in physics curricula and the techniques for teaching physics.
Physics Education Research reports: articles that provide original experimental and/or theoretical research contributions that directly relate to the teaching and learning of university-level physics.
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