Resolving Mercury’s Perihelion Precession and Implications for General Relativity

This brief explores the resolution of Mercury’s perihelion precession anomaly within the framework of Newtonian mechanics. It revisits Le Verrier’s historical calculations and the assumptions about Mercury’s mass, highlighting that the observed anomaly disappears when accurate mass values are used. The brief contrasts this resolution with General Relativity (GR), which had been invoked to explain the discrepancy, and examines the implications for GR's foundational claims. The document also explains Le Verrier’s methodology, particularly his use of perturbation theory and indirect mass estimations, and recalculates the mass of Mercury based on modern observational data and inverse proportionality between mass and precession rate.

Super-simple argument: If the implied mass, derived from the claimed precession, is inaccurate, then the precession is also inaccurate. This is because the two-body problem, integral to resolving the perturbative forces, is dependent on the masses of the bodies.