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This is a first. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has announced that it has verified for the first time Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity near a supermbadive black hole and published a study on this subject in the journal on Thursday 26 July. Astronomy and Astrophysics (in English) . The European body has also published an unpublished video of the movement of stars around the black hole called Stragittarius A *, which is in the middle of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Franceinfo has asked Aurélien Barrau, astrophysicist to CNRS, to decrypt it.
In this excerpt, there are luminous points that describe elliptical trajectories around an invisible point: it is the black hole. This is an object so dense that it prevents any material or light from escaping.
What we observe on this video is the real movement, but accelerated, of the stars around the central black hole
Aurélien Barrauto franceinfo
Sagittarius A * has a four million times that of the Sun, the ESO said in a statement. It is 26,000 light-years away from Earth. "It is obviously considerable compared to the size of the solar system, continues Aurélien Barrau. But it is derisory compared to the size of the visible universe."
When they approach the black hole, the stars reach vertiginous speeds. As close as possible to this mbadive star, the star S2, that can be seen in the video, reaches for example 8 000 km per second. "Again, it is necessary to prioritize these figures temper Aurélien Barrau. It is immense compared to what happens on Earth, in our daily life, but it is still relatively small by relation to the speed of light [300 000 km par secondes]. "
" The relativity, still explains Aurélien Barrau, it is the theory which teaches us that the space is both dynamic and moving, but space is curved. "
What we see in this video is really the curvature of space. [19659015] Aurélien Barrau
to franceinfo
