| Hexenmeister wrote:
| > |
| > | You wrote, "Mercury's precession of longitude of
| > | perihelion is quite small but entirely Newtonian."
| >
| > That doesn't mean I put a figure of 38 arc seconds a
| > century on it, I'm not that old.
|
| You don't even seem to get the distinction between "orbital
| precession" and "anomalous orbital precession".
Why don't you quit your moaning and start calculating?
I doubt you've ever seen Mercury, and if you had wouldn't
recognise it as such. Where and when would you look for it?
| There are three components to what we MEASURE as Mercury's
| orbital precession of 5600"/century:
Round figures:
century: 100 years or 36525 days.
Period of Mercury: 88 days.
36525/88 = 415 orbits
1 orbit = 360 degrees = 1,296,000 arc seconds.
415 orbits = 537,840,000 arc seconds.
An ANOMOLY of 38 arc seconds is 100 * 38/537,840,000
= 0.000007%, and you have the arrogance and stupidity
to claim that to be inexplicable, or as you put it,
"unexplainable".
Einstein had no electronic calculator, and I wouldn't
trust a MEASUREMENT to anything like that accuracy anyway.
You are a complete and total idiot, even Danby's old BASIC
is 16 bit precision, 32 bit when doubled and makes that much
error in one sin(x) calculation. You think you can do it
sweating over 7-figure logarithm tables or a slide rule?
Sheesh, I said use a spreadsheet with 64 bit precision.
Do it or **** off.
| 1) Our coordinate system is rotating. Precession of the
| equinoxes results in a shift in the zero point against which
| we measure the axis of the orbit of Mercury. Hence,
| 5025"/century is an artifact of our measurement system.
| 2) Relative to the "fixed stars", Le Verrier, Newcomb, and
| many other researchers, as well as students taking celestial
| mechanics courses, etc. have ascertained that Newtonian
| mechanics predicts that Mercury's orbit should precess by
| 532"/century, which when added to 5025"/century, yields
| 5557"/century.
| 3) All sorts of hypotheses were advanced to explain the
| discrepancy between the Newtonian prediction and observed
| fact. Le Verrier hypothesized the existence of a small
| planet, or planets, orbiting close to the Sun. Newcomb
| considered, then discarded, the notion of a ring of matter
| around the Sun. Another hypothesis that was seriously
| considered, was the possibility that gravity did not follow
| a precise inverse-square law.
| 4) Androcles/Hexenmeister proposes the simplest explanation
| to be that nobody in the last 160 years has done the NM
| calculation correctly. Done correctly, Androcles/Hexenmeister
| suggests that NM should yield a figure of 5600"/century.
| Androcles/Hexenmeister asserts this with no references nor
| any calculations, but with only his distinguished reputation
| to back up his statements.
You are a fucking idiot, babbling about things you have no
understanding of. You seem to think astronomers have had
perfect telescopes for the last 200 years and spend all their
time studying the position of Mercury, pouring over log and
sine table tables with teams of human "computers" like Bob
Cratchit in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", turning out reams
of paper.
"Oh look, we have an anomoly of 0.000007%, let's start over
and check our work again."
I don't know what planet you're from but on my planet we allow
for small errors in measurement and calculation as a fact of
life.
"38 arc seconds a century is unexplainable" -- Jeery
What IS inexplicable is how stupid you are.
Androcles.
