[…..It was as if the formula for the 43 arc seconds per century
advance was not already known from the prior work of others, which
Einstein presumably chose not to acknowledge.]

In this regard, it should be understood that, before Einstein
appeared on the scene, the physics of the 19th century had offered
explanations for the precise advance of Mercury’s perihelion. The
speed parameter c had appeared in electrodynamic equations and
efforts were made to formulate analogous gravitational equations.
These led to advance of perihelion. Suppose gravitation propagates
at a finite speed c. This means that the radial perturbations of the
planetary orbit will be retarded in relation to the orbital period.
In each successive orbit it will take a little longer for the planet
to come to perihelion and this means that the orbit will advance
progressively. The only question was that of determining the rate of
advance numerically. Physically, the advance was inevitable within
the accepted framework of 19th century physics.

The 19th century analysis of this proceeded on the assumption
that gravitation propagates at the speed of light and culminated in a
paper by Paul Gerber published in a leading German journal in 1898
[Zeitschrift Math. Phys., v. 43, p. 93 (1898)]. It was entitled: ‘The Space and Time Propagation of Gravitation’ and, by analysis using retarded potential theory, Gerber arrived at the identical formula for the rate of advance of Mercury’s perihelion that later was used in Einstein’s 1916 paper on general relativity, which appeared in Annalen der Physik. (Note: If Einstein did not know
Gerber’s 1898 paper, is it not curious that he presented the formula
for the rate of perihelion advance in an identical form, even in the
use of the same upper and lower case forms of the same typographical
symbols?)

As we read Whittaker’s historical account [E.T. Whittaker, ‘A
History of Theories of Aether and Electricity: The Classical
Theories)’, Nelson, London, p. 208 (1951)], Weber’s earlier ideas on electrodynamics led Tisserand in 1872 to work out that, if
gravitation propagated at the speed of light, the perihelion of
Mercury would advance 14 arc seconds per century. At that time the
estimated anomaly was 38 arc seconds per century, but by 1898
Gerber’s analysis gave a value three times that of Tisserand, namely
43 arc seconds, in full accord with the value adopted by Einstein in
1916.

It was only when Einstein’s paper appeared that a revised and
updated version of the Gerber paper was sent to Annalen der Physik
[P. Gerber, Ann. Phys., Lpz., v. 52, p. 415 (1917)]. It was published in January 1917. Gerber was deceased at the time his paper appeared in print and so he could not defend it against Seelinger’s attack [H. Seelinger, Ann. Phys., Lpz., v. 53, p. 31 (1917)]. It was claimed that Gerber’s analysis was flawed. However, Oppenheim [S. Oppenheim, Ann. Phys., Lpz., v. 53, p. 163 (1917)] took up the challenge, stressing that the issue of finite propagation speed of gravitation was still open as a basis for explaining the perihelion anomaly. This led Seelinger into a response holding firm to his position [Ann. Phys., Lpz., v.54, p. 38 (1917)]. Thus it was that Gerber’s work was committed to oblivion. However, it was mentioned in the 1921 review of the literature by Pauli and emerged in translated form in the 1958 book by Pauli entitled ‘Theory of Relativity’. The following text appears on p. 169:

‘Recently, an earlier attempt by P. Gerber has been discussed which tries to explain the perihelion advance of Mercury with the help of the finite velocity of propagation of gravitation, but which must be considered completely unsuccessful from a theoretical point of view. For while it leads admittedly to the correct formula – though on the basis of false deduction – it must be stressed that, even so, only the numerical factor was new.’

The footnote acknowledges Gerber’s 1898 paper and states that
the 1917 paper appearing in Annalen der Physik was a reprint of a
paper appearing in a rather obscure journal dated 1902. It may well,
therefore, have been submitted to Annalen der Physik after his
decease and by a colleague (Gerber was a school teacher) seeking to
relate what Gerber had proposed long before with the new result
claimed by Einstein.

Gerber had obtained the correct formula 18 years before
Einstein, but by a ‘false’ method. So, can it also be that Einstein
has obtained the correct formula as well, but also by the wrong
method? In saying this it is well to remember the preface note
attributed to Heaviside in 1893 and quoted at the front of
Brillouin’s book (as referenced above):

‘To form any notion at all of the flux of gravitational energy, we must first localize the energy’.

This was five years before Gerber published his first paper.
The message is clear. How can one think of calculating the delay
effects of finite propagation of gravitation unless we know the route
travelled by the energy and the seat of the source? Gerber and his
predecessors assumed that it would travel along a straight line from
Sun to planet, a very direct line of transit. In fact, the energy is
likely to be spread over the field enveloping the Sun and planet. It
must travel along numerous lines of flux all of which will imply a
longer route than was used by Gerber. So if he did get it wrong and
underestimate the rate of advance, may not a correct analysis put
things right? This has been the author’s own challenge! The
computations have been performed and, in fact, Gerber’s original
formula can be sustained by heeding Heaviside’s advice, supported by
Brillouin, and really coming to grips with the calculation.

The author’s paper was published in 1980 by the Institute of
Physics in U.K. [H. Aspden, Jour. Phys., A: Math. Gen., v. 13, p.
3649 (1980)]. Predictably, however, it has aroused no interest,
because relativity remains sacrosanct; its doctrines cannot be
supplanted. The author has also developed the same theory and its
extensions in his book ‘Physics Unified’ published in the same year 1980.

The perihelion of the planet Mercury has become synonymous with
the name of Einstein, but, quoting again and finally some words of
Heaviside which were used to open Chapter 11 of this author’s book
‘Modern Aether Science’:

‘The Einstein enthusiasts are very patronizing about the
‘classical electromagnetics and its ether’, which they have
abolished. But they will come back to it by and by. Though it leaves
gravity out in the cold, as I remarked about 1901 (I think), gravity
may be brought in by changes in the circuital laws, of practically no
significance save in some very minute effects of doubtful
interpretation (so far). But you must work fairly with the Ether and
Forces and Momentum, etc. They are realities, without Einstein’s
distorted nothingness.’
…………….(Unpublished notes of Heaviside, March 1920)

Apart from the commentary on Mercury’s perihelion, much of what
has been said above will be reminiscent of views expressed by N.
Rudakov in the beginning of his book ‘Fiction Stranger than Truth’ [Rudakov, P.O. Box 723, Geelong, Victoria 3220, Australia (1981)]. This excellent study of the metaphysical labyrinth of relativity was the first revelation to this author that his (my) non-mathematical book ‘Modern Aether Science’ was, in 1973, branded by a reviewer as the work of a crackpot. The work did receive two critical reviews, one in Nature, and both naming the same reviewer, a strong and now well placed member of the relativistic aristocracy. This reviewer was no crank in the eyes of the Establishment; he had just had a book of his own published showing how relativity was consistent with the universe erupting from a pin point, expanding and then, as time reversed, contracting back into its initial singularity! Such is the arena in the modern struggle between we Davids and the relativistic Goliaths.

This paper in The Toth-Maatian Review ended with a footnote
which the Editor, Harold Milnes, had added as an ‘Editorial Comment’:

‘We, too, have been very favourably impressed by Rudakov’s excellent work. His criticisms of the relativity theory aredefinitive; after them, there is nothing left to that theory that may be seriously considered further by intelligent men of science. It is a pity that this person (Rudakov) seems to have departed from the scene of action, intimidated, we are given to understand, by a fear of controversy and the usual muck raking by the third line
relativists.’

The above paper dates from July 1986 but my own story
concerning the perihelion of Mercury dates back more than 25 years
before that.
I had been developing my own account of energy storage in the
vacuum by electromagnetic induction and my research was based on
experimental anomalies that I encountered in my academic research. I
came to believe that the aether was the essential foundation and was
told that I was living in the past and should study Einstein’s
theory.

Well I had studied Einstein’s theory already, at least to the
point where I understood its scope and how its mathematics evolved
the result formulating the perihelion advance of a planet in orbit
around the Sun. Faced with my own interpretation of the role the
aether plays in the process of electromagnetic induction and
Einstein’s theory, which offered no solution to the induction
problem, I went my own way and I was rewarded almost immediately.

My aether could not have linear momentum, but it could have
angular momentum. When I pictured body Earth in orbit around the Sun
as enveloped in a coextensive sphere of aether rotating with it about
its axis, I knew I was looking at what was effectively a pendulum bob
in motion about a distant axis.
By this I mean that I was looking at two components, one being
the normal picture we see of a rotating sphere of matter describing
an orbit around a remote axis and the other being an aether
component. The latter itself has two parts. One is a spherical hole,
which I thought would be coextensive with the space occupied by the
planet. The other was the aether displaced by the motion of that hole
with the planet around the Sun. Now, I knew that the electric
particles which give the aether its mass property move at a high
speed associated with their quantum jitter (Zitterbewegung).
Therefore, I did not assume that I was dealing with a fluid medium
displaced by matter, which would mean that the fluid pushed ahead of
the planet by translational forward motion of its substance would
simply flow backwards around the planet. Instead, I took the view
that, once those particles came free from their organized motion
sharing that quantum jitter, they would simply deploy their existing
kinetic energy to travel at their full speed and rectilinearly across
the region of space within that ‘hole’. Here was the point of
mentioning that ‘pendulum bob’. The angular momentum of the aether
hole plus its content of aether particles in reverse flow would not
be zero. It would be that of a sphere of the aether’s mass density
rotating at the angular velocity of the planet’s motion around the
Sun.

This may need a little thought, based on the reader’s
familiarity with Newtonian mechanics, but here, to be sure, was a
feature that could bring in the aether’s angular momentum properties
into the discussion of solar system dynamics.
Believe it or not, the aether does have a mass density and it
is of the order predicted from classical studies of electromagnetic
wave properties. 19th century physicists deemed it to be of the order
of 100 gm/cc. There is also need for rigidity to sustain the lateral
vibrations as they propagate at the speed of light, but it is a
quasi-rigidity governed by those aether particles (or sub-electrons,
to use the terminology of one of these lecture topics) forming a
structure which can dissolve at its boundaries.

So far as Mercury’s anomalous perihelion motion is concerned,
you, the reader, can now work out the rate of advance of perihelion
yourself. You need simply to know, firstly, the effective mass
density of the aether in its spin condition. There is a zero
momentum, or rather a cancelling momentum, for rectilinear motion.
Then you need to know that aether mass density and the radius of the
‘hole’, which should be a little larger than that of planet. By
factoring the variation of aether angular momentum into your equation
of motion for the planet about the Sun, the resulting anomalous
progression of perihelion is derived.

This was how I first tackled the problem of the perihelion
anomaly in the 1950s, having already calculated that aether mass
density in deriving the value of Planck’s quantum of action from
basic theoretical analysis.
For the record I mention that in the book I wrote towards the
end of 1959, which I published myself early in 1960 under the title ‘The Theory of Gravitation’, the chapter on perihelion motion showed that the above method gave the following data:

Now, in doing my theoretical research, I had not set out to
enter any contest with Einstein’s theory. I simply wanted to get my
point across about the nature of magnetic induction and how the
aether stores energy in a way that allows its recovery in our
electrical machines. To be told I was wrong because there was no
aether was extremely frustrating and it was that made me alert
to the need to look for what Einstein had missed. Already, in
developing my theory from day one, I had been lucky enough to be led
from my study of ferromagnetism to see how electrodynamic force
interactions can give a force that is needed for unification with
gravitation. My target therefore was not the problems which concerned
Einstein, but rather deducing G, the constant of gravitation, in
terms of e/m, the charge/mass ratio of the electron.

My pre-1960 efforts on that, as summarized in Chapter 4 of that
book, show that I was on track. Indeed, equation (24) in that work
gave the formula for G in terms of e/m, m/M and the dimensionless
fine structure constant (1/137). Here, M was a mass also derived
theoretically, but of value virtually equal to that of the neutron,
that is very slightly larger than the mass of the proton. G was
evaluated as within one part per thousand accord with its observed
value.

I therefore knew that aether theory of this kind could bear
fruit, but these were early days, and my story here concerns that
perihelion motion of the planets.

For many years following this early work, I was struggling with
the problem that, in regarding the advance of perihelion as a
function of a planet’s aether radius, I had introduced a variable
that I could not check with observation. I knew that, for body
Earth, the upper ionosphere was the appropriate radius to put in the
equation. For Mercury, the orbit of which has a high eccentricity,
my equation had to allow for the aether radius being staged in having
an inner and outer spherical boundary, as a function of that
eccentricity. I was, therefore, more satisfied with the result for
the Earth than for Mercury. I also recall that Venus could pose a
problem, depending upon the true value of the observed advance of
perihelion. This was certainly not known, with anything like the
certainty that applied to Mercury. I noted that the radius of the
aether might need to be less that the radius of the planet in some
cases.

It was for this reason that I concentrated my onward efforts on
developing the theory as it applied to interpreting the basis of the
dimensionless physical constants, because these are known to very
high precision. This led me more towards particle physics and the
underlying quantum features rather than cosmology, whereas Einstein’s
theory had been seized upon by those who champion cosmological
topics.

It was therefore not until 1976 that I really began to look for
other ways of addressing the perihelion problem. Then, starting from
scratch, as it were, I made the bold step of seeing if I could begin
with Kepler’s third law of planetary motion and simply allow for the
retardation of energy transfer in a radial perturbation.
I adopted the following hypothesis: If a particle of relatively
small mass m is acted upon by a particle of relatively large mass M
so as to be accelerated towards M at a rate f, then the force which M
exerts on m is that applicable when m is a distance s further away
from M, s being the distance ft²/2 corresponding to acceleration
f in the time t, where t is the time taken for energy to travel from
m to M and back to m.

When I allowed for the differential effect of this upon the
radial and orbital periods of cyclic oscillation in the formulation
of Kepler’s law, what emerged immediately in a few lines of school-level mathematics was the formula for perihelion advance derived by
Paul Gerber and later adopted by Einstein.

I needed a little time to weigh what this meant to my aether
theory, but I thought I had to at least try to get this derivation
published. It was in no way dependent upon an argument which required
mention of the aether. I was having very great difficulty getting my
papers accepted by scientific journals at that time and I even
wondered if I might succeed in this quest if by using an alias. That
I did, as a test of the journal referee system, and, to my great
surprise, the very short two-page paper I then wrote on this Kepler-based derivation of the perihelion formula was accepted. The alias I
used was J. N. Kidman, using the maiden surname of my mother-in-law,
thinking this was apt name for use as an alias in this instance.

Teachers of Newtonian mechanics who wish to introduce anomalous
planetary perihelion motion in their teaching syllabus will find it
of interest to look up that paper. Its title is ‘Quantum Gravitation and the Perihelion Anomaly’ [Lettere al Nuovo Cimento, v. 18, pp. 181-182 (1977)]. No longer published, this was, at the time, an English-text scientific periodical offering rapid publication, the publishers and referee structure being the Italian Institute of Physics. As a side comment, it is interesting to note that Einstein turned to this journal for publication of his later papers when he too found it difficult to satisfy U.S. journal referees.

From then on, dating from that 1977 period, I was on the look
out for ways in which to give a more formal basis to this method of
solving the perihelion problem and by 1980 I had discovered the
correct way forward.
However, the fact remains that I wondered how I had been misled
by the earlier pre-1960 analysis of Mercury’s perihelion anomaly
based on aether theory. It is only now (1997) that I am ready to
commit to a position on this dual theory proposition. I have come to
believe that the energy retardation theory explains the actual
perihelion motion, but that what I have said above about compliance
with aether angular momentum applies as well. What this means is
that the unknown variable, the radius of the aether sphere rotating
with the planet, is not determined necessarily by the physical extent
of the planetary body. Instead, in order for the aether angular
momentum to adjust in compliance with the planet’s orbital motion, so
as not to interfere with the motion of the matter system, that
variable parameter must adopt the right value. In short, the aether
spin radius of the planet is determined as a secondary consequence of
the Newtonian dynamics of the solar system, as adjusted to bring in
the energy retardation in radial Sun-planet orbital perturbations.

For those who are interested in technological issues but have
read this far, there is much that I will have to say on the vacuum
spin theme as it applies to laboratory tests on a new kind of
electrical machine. However, at this point, I bring this particular
lecture to an end, but note again that there will be a Part II
discourse to follow on ‘Why Einstein was Wrong’, where I address the subject from a different perspective.