On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 06:04:29 +0000 (UTC), "Michael McNeil"
wrote:

Thanks John Zinni and Mike Dworetsky (needless to say I ignored the
Wally)

Of course you did. You run away from challenges to back up your
claims.


This sounds like the early proposal that the Sun might be slightly oblate,
which would be enough to produce a small perihelion advance of 43" per
century. Another theory proposed that there is a small planet interior to
Mercury. There are several observational demonstrations that these
explanations are not correct.

No sign of of an inferior orbiting body of any significant size has ever
been detected. Observations of the Sun have shown that the figure is very
accurately spherical. And the amount by which GR would affect the
perihelion advance of Venus and Earth is sufficiently different, from that
due to the oblate Sun models, to rule out the latter by direct measurement
of perihelion advance.

I presume that the time function(s) used in relativity have exact laws
or whatever and are not just numbers added to the algorythms to correct
the other functions?

If the centre of mass of the sun is not the centre of the sun (rather in
the manner of mascons on earth) this would be the oblateness you are
talking about or is there something else?

I appreciate that the problem of looking at the sun is that radiation
(or heat and light) make observations of anything past macula
impossible. Or have I got that wrong?

I had a link to someone's home page that showed a mathematical
relationship between the distances of the planets. (Not Bode's Law.
Something to do with the square or cube of the distance fom the sun of
one planet being the distance of another (or some such function of that
one) It was an attempt to relate the distances with Pythagoras' Theorem.
It worked too except it put the centre of the solar system outside of
the sun.)

Unfortunately that link went too. Not that the concept was useful in any
known way (as far as I know that is. -Rather like Desargues' Theorem.)

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