IT TOOK A WHILE TO WORK OUT WHY THE ORBIT OF MERCURY IS WEIRD. FOR THE ORDINARY MAN IN THE STREET, THIS IMPORTANT BIT OF KNOWLEDGE HAS AS MUCH IMPORTANCE AS A DEAD LEAF FALLEN THREE WEEKS AGO, TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE METRES FROM THE LOCAL PUB.

BUT FOR THE ASTRONOMER, AND THE SPACE TRAVELLING PROBES, KNOWING WHERE MERCURY IS GOING TO BE, IS ESSENTIAL.

ACCORDING TO THE DISCOVERER OF NEPTUNE WITHOUT SEEING IT, URBAIN LE VERRIER MADE SOME CALCULATION PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF SUCH A PLANET, IN 1845.

OF COURSE SHOULD YOU BE A PROUD FRANCOPHOBIC ENGLISHMAN , YOU WOULD KNOW THAT “SIMULTANEOUSLY”, THIS DISCOVERY WAS MADE BY ANOTHER ENGLISHMAN, JOHN COUCH ADAMS. BUT THIS IS IRRELEVANT EXCEPT FOR TRIVIA NIGHT. 

ON THE NIGHT OF 23-24 SEPTEMBER 1846, NEPTUNE WAS SPOTTED BY ASTRONOMERS, EXACTLY WHERE LE VERRIER HAD PREDICTED SUCH A PLANET SHOULD BE. 

A LOT OF LE VERRIER’S CALCULATIONS WERE BASED ON THE "STRANGE" VARIATIONS IN THE ORBIT OF URANUS, INDICATING SOME INFLUENCE BY ANOTHER CELESTIAL BODY.

BY 1888, WHEN LE VERRIER DIED, THE ERRATIC ORBIT OF MERCURY HAD INDICATED THE EXISTENCE OF ANOTHER PLANET, VULCAN CLOSER TO THE SUN. WE KNOW VULCAN EXISTS BECAUSE WE’VE ALL SEEN STAR TREK. 

VULCAN DOES NOT EXIST, YOU SPOK-FANS. LE VERRIER AND OTHER ASTRONOMERS, EVEN SOME WHO MISTOOK SUNSPOTS FOR VULCAN WERE USING NEWTONIAN MECHANICS TO CALCULATE MERCURY’S ORBIT, WHICH NEEDED A PLANET SUCH AS VULCAN TO EXPLAIN THE WEIRD PATH OBSERVED. 

IT TOOK ANOTHER GENIUS, SAY ALBERT EINSTEIN, TO COME WITH HIS WEIRD SPACE-TIME THEORY OF RELATIVITY FAME TO EXPLAIN WHY MERCURY IS BEHAVING BADLY. 

BUT AS RECENTLY AS 2018, SOME ADJUSTMENTS HAD TO BE MADE TO EINSTEIN'S CALCULATIONS:

A minuscule correction to the calculation of Mercury’s orbital precession has been made using previously unexplored consequences of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Clifford Will at the University of Florida has derived new equations of motion to describe a shift of one degree every two billion years in the direction of orbit’s perihelion. Although the tiny movement is currently undetectable, the correction could soon be measured when the BepiColombo mission to Mercury is launched later this year.

https://physicsworld.com/a/correcting-einsteins-calculation-of-the-orbit-of-mercury/

YOU NOW CAN GO BACK TO THE PUB AND WIN THE TRIVIA NIGHT.

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