At 05:14 AM Monday 12/1/2008, Alberto Monteiro wrote: >rob/xponent wrote: > > > > Models make predictions. And over time models have made predictions > > with greater accuracy and that cover more situations that previous > > models failed. Mercury anyone? > > >Mercury's extra precession could be modeled using Classical Mechanics, >it was just a matter of adjusting Sun's J2. The surprising thing >was that, with GR, Sun's J2 is negligible. > >Alberto Monteiro
Yep. If the Sun indeed had turned out to be measurably oblate, or at least its gravitational field had turned out so, the very good match that exists between the prediction from GR and the measured excess in the precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit would have been much less good. . . . ronn! :) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
