General Relativity and the precession of the perihelion of Mercury

  • #1
cianfa72
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TL;DR Summary
Test of GR: anomalous precession of perihelion of Mercury
Hi, as test of GR I'm aware of there is the "anomalous" precession of the perihelion of Mercury.

My question is: in which coordinate system are the previsions of GR verified concerning the above ? Thanks.
 
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  • #2
I am not sure this question is answerable. The perihelion advance is a physical thing. It's not coordinate dependent.
 
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  • #3
You don’t verify things in coordinate systems. You verify invariant predictions.
 
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  • #4
Orodruin said:
You don’t verify things in coordinate systems. You verify invariant predictions.
Can you be more specific in this statement ? Thanks.
 
  • #5
cianfa72 said:
Can you be more specific in this statement ? Thanks.
The statement is very specific already. what part of it confuses you?
 
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  • #6
Can you give an example of invariant prediction concerning the perihelion advance ?
 
  • #7
cianfa72 said:
Can you give an example of invariant prediction concerning the perihelion advance ?
The position of Mercury on Earth's sky relative to other astronomical objects--the Sun, Moon, stars and other planets--as a function of time by standard Earth clocks.
 
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  • #8
The angle between the line connecting the Sun and Mercury and the line connecting Mercury to some selected fixed star at Mercury's perihelion on consecutive orbits.
cianfa72 said:
Can you give an example of invariant prediction concerning the perihelion advance ?
 
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  • #9
How the derivation of such properties is carried out starting from EFE ?
 
  • #10
cianfa72 said:
How the derivation of such properties is carried out starting from EFE ?
See, for example, section 9.3 in Gravity, by James Hartle.
 
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  • #11
cianfa72 said:
Can you give an example of invariant prediction concerning the perihelion advance ?
A measurement result is invariant. Urbain Le Verrier studied related astronomic measurements.

Urbain Le Verrier in 1859 on the perihelion precession of Mercury
...
While of the Sun we only have meridian observations subject to great objections, we have, over the space of a century and a half, a certain number of observations of Mercury possessing great precision - I want to speak of the internal contacts of Mercury's disc with the Sun's disc, when the planet comes to pass in front of this star. As long as the place where the observation was made is well known, and as long as the astronomer had a reasonable refracting telescope and his clock was accurate to within a few seconds, the knowledge of the instant when the internal contact happened must allow us to estimate the distance between the centre of the planet and the centre of the Sun without an error of more than one arcsecond. We possess, from 1697 until 1848, twenty-one observations of this type, for which we have to be able to satisfy in the most stringent manner whether the irregularities of the movements of the Earth and of Mercury were well calculated, and if the values attributed to the perturbative masses are correct.
...
But what is remarkable is that increasing the secular movement of the perihelion by 38 arcseconds was enough to show all the observations of the transits to within one second, and even the majority of those to within one half-second. This result, so clean, which immediately shows in all comparisons a greater precision than achieved until now in astronomical theories, clearly shows the increase in the movement of the Mercury's perihelion is indispensable, and that therefore the Tables of Mercury and of the Sun have all the desired precision.
Source:
https://pappubahry.livejournal.com/572713.html
 
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  • #12
Orodruin said:
The angle between the line connecting the Sun and Mercury and the line connecting Mercury to some selected fixed star at Mercury's perihelion on consecutive orbits.
The angle between these two lines is always evaluated at Mercury's perihelion on consecutive orbits. And this angle changes from a Mercury's orbit (given as completed at its perihelion) to the next, right ?

Edit: I found this interesting video
 
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  • #13
cianfa72 said:
TL;DR Summary: Test of GR: anomalous precession of perihelion of Mercury

My question is: in which coordinate system are the previsions of GR verified concerning the above ?
I think this means, in which coordinate system are calculations made of the anomalous precession of the perihelion of Mercury made, which can then be compared to experiment.
This can be answered by putting "precession of mercury calculation" into Google.
The calculations given there generally use spherical coordinates, with a term 1/r^3 added to the differential equation.
 
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  • #14
Meir Achuz said:
The calculations given there generally use spherical coordinates, with a term 1/r^3 added to the differential equation.
It should be pointed out that it is only ”added” relative to the Newtonian case. It is an essential part of the GR equations of motion for the radial coordinate after integrating out the angular part.
 
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  • #15
Orodruin said:
It is an essential part of the GR equations of motion for the radial coordinate after integrating out the angular part.
From my understanding, the above GR equations of motion involve the Schwarzschild radius in Schwarzschild spacetime (in which the radius is centered in the Sun).
 
  • #16
cianfa72 said:
From my understanding, the above GR equations of motion involve the Schwarzschild radius in Schwarzschild spacetime (in which the radius is centered in the Sun).
In the weak field approximation, which is sufficient to derive perihelion precession, it doesn't matter whether you use Schwarzschild coordinates or isotropic coordinates; the weak field terms are the same in both cases. (Or, to put it another way, the difference between areal radius and radial distance is small enough that it drops out of the weak field approximation.) AFAIK the solar system barycentric frame that is commonly used in astronomy uses isotropic coordinates.
 
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  • #17
PeterDonis said:
AFAIK the solar system barycentric frame that is commonly used in astronomy uses isotropic coordinates.
Which are the isotropic coordinates ?
 
  • #19
From wikipedia link the spacelike congruence given by the vector field ##\partial_r## in the isotropic chart should be actually a geodesic congruence, i.e. $$\nabla_{\partial_r} \partial_r=0$$
 
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  • #20
cianfa72 said:
From wikipedia link the spacelike congruence given by the vector field ##\partial_r## in the isotropic chart should be actually a geodesic congruence, i.e. $$\nabla_{\partial_r} \partial_r=0$$
This is true in Schwarzschild coordinates as well, because the spacelike surfaces of constant time, which are the surfaces in which these curves lie, are the same in both cases.
 
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  • #21
So the invariant measurement of the precession of Mercury's perihelion can be calculated in the isotropic coordinate chart centered on the Sun.
 
  • #22
… or any other coordinate chart. This is the point of being invariant.

(Then the difficulty of the computation may vary by chart, but that’s why picking a chart well suited for the problem is an art.)
 
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