General relativity describes new phenomena, which the old Newtonian law of gravity could not predict: examples of this are black holes (in principle, Newtonian gravity can predict they exist, but not describe them to the extent of GR) and gravitational waves (this is a totally unique phenomenon to GR).

Einstein made a series of predictions using General Relativity. For example, using his theory, he explained why Mercury’s orbit drifts – because of this distortion of space-time.

Gravitational time dilation, gravitational lensing, the gravitational redshift of light, gravitational time delay, and singularities/black holes are examples of such differences.

General relativity has been experimentally verified by observations of gravitational lenses, the orbit of the planet Mercury, the dilation of time in Earth ’s gravitational field, and gravitational waves from merging black holes.