
Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity can be proven because of how Mercury orbits the Sun. Isaac Newton correctly explained how and why planets orbit the Sun, but because Mercury is so close to the Sun, it orbited its center star 7% faster than it should have therefore Mercury is close enough to the Sun that its space-time path is warped because of the mass of the Sun and this warping causes Mercury to orbit faster than planets further away. For many decades scientists hypothesized there was another planet, unseen yet, which gave Mercury an extra push. This additional planet was prematurely named “Vulcan”, which was in vain because no such planet ever existed. It was also theorized that cosmological dust gave Mercury its extra boost or that an unseen asteroid or asteroid field was helping Mercury along. It wasn’t until Albert Einstein proposed that all matter cuts through both space and time, following a curve, that the catalyst could be definitively proven. If a sphere rolled along a table and suddenly hit a dip, it would speed up and change its trajectory. This is essentially what occurs within space-time and is the reason Isaac Newton’s Universal Laws of Gravitation don’t quite fit with Mercury. Mercury is close enough to the Sun that its space-time path is warped because of the mass of the Sun and this warping causes Mercury to orbit faster than planets further away. It is not only Mercury which does this; any planet or body near its host star will orbit slightly faster than planets or bodies further away. Although it is impossible to visually see the curvature and bending of space-time, it can be definitively proven because of the way large bodies of matter affect smaller bodies of matter due to the mass of each body



