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The theory proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915 predicts that the acceleration must be the same regardless of the gravitational field itself of the falling bodies, even if it is a problem. objects as mbadive as a neutron star.
that Einstein embodied in his theory had previously been championed by scientists like Galileo in the sixteenth century, and various experiments have shown it in various environments.
In 1971, American astronaut David Scott played in one of the most famous manifestations, releasing a hammer and feather on the surface of the moon, which hit the ground at the same time.
To test this prediction in a more extreme environment, a group of the Netherlands Radio Astronomy Institute (ASTRON) led by Anne Archibald studied the movement of a triple star system, formed by a neutron star orbited by a white dwarf, which in turn keeps another white dwarf orbiting further
Physicists have badyzed how the most distant star attraction affects the internal binary system, which also has a powerful gravitational field.
The authors of the study published in Nature have calculated that the difference between the accelerations detected in the white dwarf and the neutron star is of the order of only 2.6 millionths, which supports the principle of equivalence postulated by general relativity.
Archibald's observations improve those obtained to date in similar tests, which had reached a resolution of thousandths.
"If the neutron star and the inner white dwarf fall with different accelerations to the outside of the white dwarf, a slight deformation would be perceived in the orbit of the inner system," says physicist Clifford Will, of the University of Florida, in a Nature article that accompanies the study of the Dutch group. 002] "Archibald and his colleagues provide an badysis based on nearly six years of data collection in which there is no evidence of this distortion", describes Will
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