From: richalivingston@gmail.com   
      
   Recently I've been thinking about planetary aberration.  This is the   
   effect where the finite speed of light causes an orbiting body to see   
   the opposite body on its past light cone, and thus displaced from its   
   "now" position directly opposite the center of gravity.  The problem is   
   that if the body it attracted directly towards this displaced position,   
   there is a torque on the system that would cause it to speed up.   
      
   This clearly does not happen.  A quick calculation for the earth-sun   
   system shows that the angular momentum would double in about 800 years,   
   which clearly has not been happening.   
      
   My question for this group is why not?  I'm not equipped to calculate GR   
   results for this problem, but I have calculated for electromagnetic   
   attraction, such as for positronium (an electron and positron in mutual   
   orbit). Even including magnetic effects does not displace the direction   
   of attraction towards the center of gravity.  Likewise the Lorentz   
   transform and relativistic doppler shift and "search light" effect also   
   do not solve the issue, and if anything make it worse.   
      
   I've been considering the possibility that each object is attracted to   
   images of the other object on both the past and future light cones, but   
   this has the issue that oscillating motion of the future image should   
   radiate signals to the object in the past, like a radio transmitter,   
   which also clearly does not happen.   
      
   Does anyone here know of any papers treating this?  I've been searching   
   on scholar.google.com, arxiv.com and the APS journal web site, but so   
   far I haven't found anything that addresses this issue.   
      
   Rich L.   
      
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