Albert Einstein's theory of relativity: first successful test on Black Hole

In the center of the Milky Way, astronomers found further confirmation of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity: for the first time, they were able to detect gravitational redshift.

Scientists around Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, near Munich, had targeted the S2 star and closely monitored how he was pbading the extremely mbadive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Their observations with the "Very Large Telescope" (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory Eso present the researchers in the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics".

The S2 star revolves around the black hole at 26,000 light-years at the center of the Milky Way approximately every 15 years. In its egg-shaped orbit, it approaches the black hole at a distance of 14 billion kilometers – about three times the distance from the outermost planet of our system, Neptune, to the Sun.

At 25 million kilometers per hour around the black hole

The star is going very fast, it reaches a speed of more than 25 million kilometers per hour, or nearly three percent of the speed light. According to Einstein's theory published more than 100 years ago, the star's light should be a little redder because of the strong gravitational force of the black hole – the wavelength of the light increases. Exactly this effect, the researchers have now observed.

The discovery of this gravitational redshift was the culmination of a 26-year observation campaign, emphasized the Max Planck Society. "We've been looking for it for a decade and prepared the experiment," Genzel said.

"This is the second time we see S2 flying around the black hole in our galactic center, but this time we have been able to follow the star with unprecedented detail resolution through improved instrumentation . " Co-author Stefan Gillessen of the Garching Institute adds: "This allowed us to track the star on its orbit extremely accurately and to prove the gravitational redshift in the spectrum of S2." According to Einstein's theory, matter distorts space-time. The material is, the deepest is the bump in the space-time. An extremely dense mbad can bend the space-time to such an extent that the tooth is insurmountably deep. Everything in the tooth is trapped inside and decoupled from the rest of the universe, even light can come out of it.