/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11044651
>relativity has been verified every time.

The history of the search for "planet Vulcan" is interesting in this context.

The orbit of Mercury could not be described adequately by Newtonian gravity. When Uranus was discovered, somewhat similar problems arose with computing its orbit, and understanding those lead to the prediction of the planet Neptune, and where to look in the night sky to find it.

That success led astronomers to wonder if an undiscovered planet between Mercury and the Sun might explain Mercury's orbital oddities, and a generation of scientists engaged in a search for the planet, generally called "Vulcan." It was "sighted" several time, but its discovery was never really confirmed. Eventually the puzzle was just marked "Fuck if I know,"pending further discoveries.

Then Einstein and his theory came along. One of the interesting consequences of Einstein's equations was that they turned out to predict the orbit of Mercury correctly. In fact, under Einstein's theory, there must NOT be a planet between Mercury and the Sun -- if there were, it would perturb Mercury's orbit away from what it is known to be, and what Einstein's theory predicts it would be.