GR is a theory of gravity, explaining it in a different way than Newtonian Gravitation, but it results in a Globe regardless, Non-euclidean.
I guess I "sort of" agree with what you are saying, but the point I have been trying to make all along is that the
Newtonian Laws of Motion and Gravitation explain it all
almost perfectly.
Well before
Einstein came along astronomers had measured the precession of the perihelion of planetry orbits.
They found for the inner three planets the values shown here (not including the "Prediction GTR"):
See more in
Epstein, Relativity, The Precession of the Perihelion of MercuryI think that the
almost can be justified when there are so many asteroids, etc, that cannot be accounted for.
Then, of course, Einstein came along with his GR and explained the slight observed discrepancies.
What leaves me in awe is the precision that those old astronomers could achieve, not only with the measurements of precision of a few
arcseconds per century, but with the precision of their calculations based on Newtonian mechanics of the effects of the other planets, etc - all with hand calculations!
(By the way, I have a query with the 579.16 arcsecs/century figure for Mercury - I must chase it up.)
There is nothing wrong with
Newtonian mechanics for everyday calculations or even orbital calculation - after all, it is what used for all except the most advanced particle physics of cosmological calculations.
All the manned space missions right from the early
Mercury and
Gemini through to the lunar landings used simply
Newtonian mechanics. In the earlier these were calculated by a team of "human computers", see
Katherine G. Johnson These women were the "computers" that did the orbital calculations for the early space missions.
The Black Female Mathematicians Who Sent Astronauts to Space
space program, starting with the Mercury missions in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, through the Apollo moon missions in the late ’60s and early ‘70s, and ending with the space shuttle missions in the mid '80s. Among other things, she calculated the trajectories of America's first manned mission into orbit and the first Moon landing.
From: The Black Female Mathematicians Who Sent Astronauts to Space
You cannot do even
Schwarzschild metric approximations to GR that way - you need pretty advanced computers and do it numerically.
Relativistic corrections are then added where they are needed.
My big beef is when people drag in GR quite unnecessarily and in many cases to big-note themselves or to confuse their readers.
GR is totally unnecessary in any debate on the shape of the earth - old Newton gives the same answers in almost all cases to a better accuracy that we can hope to measure.
The exception to this is in "time dilation" due to
velocity and/or
gravitational potential and this is simply due to the extraordinary precision that can be achieved in time measurement.
But yeah, it seems I was wrong about Earth being flat in GR, it would actually be round.
No problem! Looks like you're in good company:
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
But I would disagree a little with the way you put that.
GR itself cannot cause the earth to be flat or a Globe any more than Newtonian mechanics can.
It is
Gravitation that is the cause of all astronomical bodies over a few hundred kilometres in diameter being more or less spherical.
And "Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation" or "General Relativity" are just theories explaining how gravitation
behaves.
"General Relativity" is no more the final answer as to the
cause of gravitation than was "Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation".
Sorry, this got long again!
PS Another interesting topic is the ellipticity of planets, and how it fits with there size and rotational period.
A bit in
Flat Earth Debate / Re: Gravity does not always make spheres