Abstract
RELATIVITY AND GRAVITATION.—A pamphlet has just reached us entitled “La spostamento del perielio di mercurio, e la deviazione dei raggi luminosi, secondo la teoria di Einstein,” by Attilio Palatini (from Nuovo Cimento, July, 1917; Pisa: Stabilimento Tipografico Toscano). The pamphlet, like the article by Prof. Eddington in NATURE of December 28, 1916 (vol. xcviii., p. 328), aims at making the outlines of Einstein's relativity theory clear to those who have not access to his original works. The points in which the new theory differs from our earlier conceptions of Euclidean space and Newtonian dynamics are clearly brought out. As the title indicates, particular stress is laid upon the manner in which it completely accounts for the excess of 43″ per century in the motion of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit, which had been recognised as a difficulty in the Newtonian theory. It is especially noteworthy that the Einstein theory was laid down quite independently of this result, which is therefore in the nature of an undesigned coincidence. It differs in this respect from some other relativity theories, which have assumed arbitrary values for certain coefficients, in order to satisfy the observed facts. Einstein's result involves no arbitrary constant, but simply depends on the ratio of Mercury's velocity to that of light. The pamphlet employs two different methods of development, each leading to the result that the perihelion advances 0-1″ in one revolution of Mercury.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 100, 492 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/100492a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100492a0