Murcury

[neurosurgon*]

what happens when Mercury is in retrospect?

[Sequin]

It disappears behind Uranus

[slimfandango]

you mean why does it seem that way? It's an illusion.

[neurosurgon*]

Don't unusual things happen?  my dad said that you aren't supposed to buy cars when mercury is in retrospect.

[jake-the-peg]

Astrologers rake in money

Seriously though Mercury's orbit is interesting because it's precession ( ie how the orbit itself moves around the sun) was not properly explained until General relativity. Mercury is sufficiently close to the sun for General Relativity to apply and the explanation of this effect was one of the great sucesses of the theory 

[neurosurgon*]

Thank you jake-the-peg. and Sequin and slimfandango.

[slimfandango]

yw.

jake please can you expand?

And jake, I bet you didn't see Friends this morning...

It was like the script writers had been reading AB threads.

Ross "Evolution is non-negotiable. It's fact."

Phoebe "It's not fact. I just don't swallow it. It's like one of these negotiable things. The story just seems too simple."

Ross "Simple? You call evolution of all animal life from single celled organisms simple?"

Phoebe "It's just one of those negotiable 'theories' like ...gravity"

Ross "Gravity? You don't believe in gravity? What do you think is pulling you down?"

Phoebe "I don't think so much pulling you down as something 'squishing you from above".

(Which was one of the exact answers on our thread. lol)

[Hippy]

Maybe I'm missing some particular bit of socially relevant Ephemera from the boob tube, but I thought retrospect meant looking back, and that when it comes to those wanderers in the sky retrograde was a more apt alliteration.

To go retrograde is when a planet's progress across the heavens appears to go into reverse. This has little to do with relativity, general or otherwise, but is an effect of parallax: it is a function of the movements between the bodies being observed and that of the observer.

Mercurial quicksilver gives speed to thought and decision. Those affected by Mercury are likely to be successful by being actors, not what they seem, and fast to vanish. Retrograde Mercury puts this into reverse, and could lead to the swift decent into failure and ruinous decisions.

[jake-the-peg]

Never managed to sit through a complete episode of friends the laugh track always makes me want to throw something heavy at the television - funny that I'll happily ignore it on English shows like Black Adder but US laugh tracks make me homicidal -

Anyway you can see a quick overview of GR and mercury here:

http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node60.html