Gravitational Time Dilation, Orbital Advance, and Observational Tests of NUVO - Part 5 of the NUVO Theory Series

This paper presents the third installment in the NUVO Theory series, focusing on its empirical consistency with key relativistic phenomena. NUVO replaces the traditional interpretation of gravity as spacetime curvature with a flat-space scalar modulation governed by the conformal factor λ(t, r, v). This scalar field, dependent on both kinetic and gravitational energy, modifies the proper time and spatial trajectory of particles without requiring curved geometry. We demonstrate that NUVO reproduces gravitational time dilation, redshift, and orbital precession through a unified scalar mechanism. These effects are applied to real-world scenarios including the Global Positioning System, the Pound–Rebka experiment, and Mercury’s perihelion advance. Unlike conventional approaches that require patching special relativity into a non-inertial context, NUVO derives all corrections within a single inertial-frame formalism. Numerical integration of the geodesic equations shows NUVO’s perihelion predictions align with general relativity in the weak-field limit. Additionally, a post- Newtonian expansion confirms that Newtonian gravity emerges naturally from the scalar field when energy corrections are small. These results position NUVO as a physically consistent and observationally valid alternative to the spacetime curvature paradigm.