Timeline for How would I observe the trajectory of the planet Mercury from an inertial frame of reference?
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| Aug 7, 2023 at 23:42 | comment | added | Claudio Saspinski | "or would I observe it moving in the way predicted by Newton's mechanics?" In reality Newton's mechanics predicts the precession of Mercury. It is just not accurate enough, and GR is necessary to refine the prediction. See physics.stackexchange.com/q/696607/195949 | |
| Aug 7, 2023 at 17:30 | history | edited | Qmechanic♦ |
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| Aug 7, 2023 at 17:07 | comment | added | Jack | @JohnRennie so the bottom line is if I were to observe the precession of Mercury's perihelion, then the frame of reference from which I am making the observation Is inevitably non inertial, right? | |
| Aug 7, 2023 at 16:04 | answer | added | Cleonis | timeline score: 0 | |
| Aug 7, 2023 at 16:04 | comment | added | John Rennie | There are no globally inertial frames in GR. If you are falling freely your frame is locally inertial, but unless Mercury is local to you it will not obey Newton's laws. If you and Mercury are sufficiently close for a locally inertial frame to include you both then you'd just see Mercury stay motionless relative to you. | |
| Aug 7, 2023 at 15:15 | comment | added | Jack | What i think is since you're in an inertial frame of reference, you should see things as the laws of physics in this frame predict, so given an inertial frame, the laws of physics says that the trajectory of the planet Mercury is elliptical with no precession of its perihelion | |
| Aug 7, 2023 at 15:01 | comment | added | Sten | An example of an inertial frame of reference would be that of a satellite or astronaut orbiting the Earth. Can you explain why you suspect that they might come to a different conclusion about the orbit of Mercury than an astronomer on Earth's surface would? | |
| Aug 7, 2023 at 14:34 | history | asked | Jack | CC BY-SA 4.0 |