Re: Mercury's Orbit of Advance Calculated by Einstein

From: Australopithecus Afarensis (fossil.lucy_at_cox.net)
Date: 07/24/04 

Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 00:33:52 -0700

Although I know Grossmann to be Einstein's classmate, the history does not
mention very much about him. The Encyclopedia Britannica does not even
mention him. After searching through the internet, I discovered that
Grossmann was the first person to realize Riemann space as necessary concept
and tensor calculus as very useful mathematical tools to study the mechanism
of gravity. Here is another incidence where any of Einstein's discoveries,
there exists another person nearby. History always records this other
person as moral support. Let's not get into Bose-Einstein Condensation.
Thanks for pointing out Grossmann.

In every derivation of Mercury's orbital advance I have found on the
internet, the spacetime equations play a central role. Without a
Schwarzschild metric, the spacetime equations have to resort back to the
Minkowski Spacetime Equation which would never predict a 43" per century.
If Einstein were able to derive it without Schwarzschild metric, there must
be another way to do so without the spacetime equations. I just find it so
odd and so coincedental that such a precise number can be derived with or
without Schwarzschild metric.