The General Theory of Relativity Is True

I. The Perihelion Precession of MercuryMy opponent doesn't seem to grasp the science behind this proof. I will explain why my opponent's criticism is unwarranted. First, my opponent is trying to blow the sun's loss of mass way out of proportion. As this explains, "Over one year this [the mass loss] is 7 x 10^19 grams, and over the entire life of the Sun to date is about 3.1 x 10^29 grams. The mass of the Sun is 4 x 10^33 grams so this loss equals 0.008 percent of its current mass. "[1] Does this really sound that big? In fact, in relation to the Earth's orbit, it will only add 7000 miles over the next 4.5 billion years. The Earth's spproximate current orbital distance is 577108800 miles. [1][2] This is about a 0.0001% increase in its orbital distance; again, a rather increase. The arc-seconds per century decrease would equal around 0.0001% in 4.5 billion years compared to today, so this is rather irrelevant. I will now explain why relativity's effects are important here. Here is a chart detailing this process: Sources of the precession of perihelion for Mercury Amount (arcsec/Julian century) Cause 531.63 ±0.69 Gravitational tugs of the other planets 0.0254 Oblateness of the Sun (quadrupole moment) 42.98 ±0.04 General relativity 574.64±0.69 Total 574.10±0.65 Observed No other theory tried fits in with this kind of accuracy. Relativity explains it perfectly. [3][4][5]In addition, this is confirmed when other planets are studied. The farther away a planet is, the less relativity there is because the less precession there is. This has been confirmed: The other planets experience perihelion shifts as well, but, since they are farther from the sun and have longer periods, their shifts are lower, and could not be observed accurately until long after Mercury's. For example, the perihelion shift of Earth's orbit due to general relativity is of 3.84 seconds of arc per century, and Venus's is 8.62". Both values are in good agreement with observation. The periapsis shift of binary pulsar systems have been measured, with PSR 1913+16 amounting to 4.2º per year. These observations are consistent with general relativity. [6][7][8]Therefore, relativity does cause this perihelion precession. II. The Expansion of the Universe Einstein did at first propose a static universe, but as my opponent's source 5 explains, Einstein's equations of relativity never indicated that the universe was ever static. In fact, it did predict an ever accelerating expanding universe. His cosmological constant and equations explain this expansion. "In modern terms, it represents the contribution of the vacuum energy. "[14]Recently, a team of cosmologists have announced the most accurate measurement ever made from when the expansion of the universe began to accelerate. Their results? "The new test of Einstein's view of the universe has proved him right with ‘incredible accuracy’ and is helping scientists to understand the mysterious acceleration of the universe. .. It means that the phenomenon can be explained using just Einstein's general theory of relativity and the cosmological constant - the simplest theoretical explanation for the acceleration of the universe. "[9][15]In fact, "[A] team found that the galaxies, located up to 3.5 billion light-years from Earth, are clustered together in precisely the way that general relativity predicts. By combining measurements of the galaxies' clustering with other properties—such as the galaxies' movements relative to one another and the way they bend each other's light—Reyes's team calculated EG, a quantity physicists use when looking at objects' expected interactions. General relativity predicts that EG should be around 0.4. The value of EG measured in the study was 0.39. "[10] Relativity predicts this pretty well. III. Gravitational Lensing My opponent fails to make any sense with his point here. Relativity predicts that, "[there will be] apparent bending of light as it passes near a massive body. "[11] "This effect was conclusively observed during the solar eclipse of 1919, when the Sun was silhouetted against the Hyades star cluster, for which the positions were well known. "[11] The fact that is exists proves relativity because gravitational lensing was one of the predictions of Einstein and the general theory of relativity. "Einstein's theory predicts that the direction of light propagation should be changed in a gravitational field. Precise observations indicate that Einstein is right, both about the effect and its magnitude. We have already seen a spectacular consequence of the deflection of light in a gravitational field: gravitational lensing. "[12]IV. Black Holes Because of, "Scientists think somehow galaxies are ridding themselves of much of the mass that would have ended up falling into their central black holes. "[13]Even so, I fail to see how this disproves relativity. My opponent needs to explain why the fact that simulations produce more black holes than are actually in the universe disproves relativity. Sources:[1]: . http://www.astronomycafe.net...[2]: . http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov...[3]: Clemence, G. M. (1947). "The Relativity Effect in Planetary Motions". Reviews of Modern Physics 19 (4): 361–364. [4]: Lorenzo Iorio (2005). "On the possibility of measuring the solar oblateness and some relativistic effects from planetary ranging". Astronomy and Astrophysics 433: 385–393. [5]: Myles Standish, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1998)[6]: Biswas, Abhijit; Mani, Krishnan R. S. (2008). "Relativistic perihelion precession of orbits of Venus and the Earth". Central European Journal of Physics. v1 6 (3): 754–758. [7]: . http://books.google.com...[8]: . http://aspbooks.org...[9]: . http://www.dailymail.co.uk...[10]: . http://news.nationalgeographic.com...[11]: . http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu...[12]: . http://csep10.phys.utk.edu...[13]: . http://www.scientificamerican.com...;[14]: . http://www.eso.org...; [15]: . http://www.telegraph.co.uk...