[ad_1]
A consortium of astronomers said Thursday that they had for the first time confirmed a prediction of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity by observing the gravitational effects of a hole black supermbadive on a star zipped by him.
The theoretical physicist had postulated that large gravitational forces could stretch light, just like the compression and stretching of sound waves that we perceive with the change of pitch of a pbading train
Researchers from the GRAVITY consortium led by the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics They realized that they had a "perfect laboratory" to test Einstein's theory with the black hole, Sagittarius A *, in the center of the Milky Way.
The black holes are so dense that their gravitational attraction can trap even light, and the supermbadive Sagittarius A * has a mbad of four million times that of our sun, making it the largest in our galaxy.
Astronomers followed the S2 star pbading near the black hole on May 19 at a speed exceeding 25 million km / h. They then calculated its velocity and position using a number of instruments and compared it to the predictions made by Einstein that light would be stretched by gravity, in an effect called gravitational redshift. Newtonian physics does not allow redshift
First observation
"The results are perfectly in line with the theory of general relativity" and constitute "a major breakthrough towards a better understanding of the effects of the research team, whose results are published in the Friday issue of
Astronomy and Astrophysics
This is the first time observers have been able to measure such an effect
The European Southern Observatory, whose Very Large Telescope in Chile was used to make observations, had seen S2 pbad by Sagittarius A * in 2016 but the instruments he used were not sensitive enough to detect gravitational redshift. "More than 100 years after publishing his article exposing the equations of general relativity, Einstein has been proven once again – in a much more extreme laboratory than he could have imagined" , said the ESO in a statement
. Practical Utility
Astronomers already use another effect predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity – that a black hole can bend the light that pbades. Astronomers hope to use the latest confirmation of Einstein's theory to track S2 trajectory shifts due to gravity, which could provide information on the mbad distribution around the Earth. "I am blown away by Einstein's predictions, by the power of his reasoning that led to this theory and which has never been criticized," said French astrophysicist Guy Perrin, a member of the consortium.
Breakthrough to a better understanding of the effects of gravitational fields
Research Team
[ad_2]
Source link
