Einstein and Mercury: How the Orbit of Mercury Proved Einstein was Right

The orbit of the planet Mercury is a bit strange and doesn’t act exactly as expected. This was such a problem, that we even invented another planet to account for its weird orbit. In fact it is this strangeness that provided evidence that Einstein was right all along. Let’s find out more. The orbit of Mercury doesn’t act like we expect it to, it has a rate of precession that is higher than expected. In the 19th century, astronomers even suggested that this was due to an additional planet that they named Vulcan. In fact the real reason was even more strange and due to the curvature of spacetime. This proved Einstein and his theory of general relativity correct after all. Chapters 0:00 – Introduction 0:29 – General Relativity 2:45 – Orbits and ellipses 5:00 – Precession 6:00 – The problem with Mercury 7:20 – Relativity 8:15 – Real World Applications