ESA/ATG medialab; Mercury: NASA/JPLIn a new paper in Physical Review Letters, University of Florida physicist Clifford Will showed that the upcoming BepiColombo space probe may be able to test an aspect of Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity, that's been out of reach so far. This effect comes from the gravity of other planets in the Solar System, leading to a tiny shift in Mercury's orbit. But small doesn't mean unimportant: If general relativity needs to be modified on this tiny level, the BepiColombo probe may be able to spot that discrepancy. In 1915, Einstein showed that his brand-new theory of gravity, general relativity, predicted Mercury's precession exactly. It's a very remote possibility: General relativity has held up completely under every test so far, but we have to check everything just in case.

Source: Forbes May 09, 2018 17:02 UTC