What does the curvature of spacetime have to do with the Perihelion precession of Mercury?

Question by mmmrty: What does the curvature of spacetime have to do with the Perihelion precession of Mercury?
The perihelion precession of Mercury was the first evidence to prove that general relativity is correct. According to Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington's 1919 expedition of Einstein's prediction for the deflection of light by the Sun during the total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919, it helped to concrete general relativity as true theory.

Help me! I can't understand it fully in relation with the theory of general relativity of Einstein and curvature of spacetime


Best answer:
Answer by Lola FBonobo is, unfortunately, confused, as are you. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the "apparent" position of Mercury near the sun, or with the Eddingtim 1919 expedition. The two of you are thinking of Eddington's images of *stars* near the sun, not Mercury, which are in slightly "wrong" positions in the sky because of the gravity of the Sun.

Mercury's orbit is observed to be *actually* non-Elliptical and to *actually* violate Kepler's Laws, and this fact had been known for a century before Einstein. It is also known that the gravitational perturbations of the other planets aren't sufficient to explain this. General Relativity, however, does explain it in a natural way.

Near the Sun, clocks run slower due to gravitational contraction (or, depending on how you measure it or look at it, there is more space near the sun than their would be if space weren't curved). So Mercury spends more time near the sun because (as observed from far away) its clocks are slower there or (as observed from Mercury) there is more space there to traverse than there ought to be. So Mercury spends more time near the sun than Kepler would predict, and its orbit precesses as a result. Presumably this also happens with the other planets too, but at a level too low to detect.

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