Gravitational Anomalies in the Solar System?

Abstract

Mindful of the anomalous perihelion precession of Mercury discovered by U. Le Verrier in the second half of the nineteenth century and its successful explanation by A. Einstein with his General Theory of Relativity in the early years of the twentieth century, discrepancies among observed effects in our Solar system and their theoretical predictions on the basis of the currently accepted laws of gravitation applied to known bodies have the potential of paving the way for remarkable advances in fundamental physics. This is particularly important now more than ever, given that most of the Universe seems to be made of unknown substances dubbed Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Should this not be directly the case, Solar system's anomalies could anyhow lead to advancements in cumulative science, as shown to us by the discovery of Neptune in the first half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, investigations in one of such directions can serendipitously enrich the other one as well. The current status of some alleged gravitational anomalies in the Solar system is critically reviewed. They are: a) Possible anomalous advances of planetary perihelia; b) Unexplained orbital residuals of a recently discovered moon of Uranus (Mab); c) The lingering unexplained secular increase of the eccentricity of the orbit of the Moon; d) The so-called Faint Young Sun Paradox; e) The secular decrease of the mass parameter of the Sun; f) The Flyby Anomaly; g) The Pioneer Anomaly; and h) The anomalous secular increase of the astronomical unit

LaTex2e, 35 pages, no figures, 4 tables, 300 references. Invited review. Version published in International Journal of Modern Physics D (IJMPD)

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• General Relativity and Cosmology: Unsolved Questions and Future Directions
• Quantised inertia from relativity and the uncertainty principle
• Will-Nordtvedt PPN formalism applied to renormalization group extensions of general relativity
• Solar System constraints on Renormalization Group extended General Relativity: The PPN and Laplace-Runge-Lenz analyses with the external potential effect
• On the effect of ocean tides and tesseral harmonics on spacecraft flybys of the Earth
• Anomalous accelerations in spacecraft flybys of the Earth
• Can Orbital Clustering of KBOs in the Ecliptic be due to the Solar Toroidal Field Generated Spacetime Dragging?
• On the possible onset of the Pioneer anomaly
• Are we close to put the anomalous perihelion precessions from Verlinde's emergent gravity to the test?