the light itself is affected by the force of gravity

The theory of general relativity of Albert Einstein, formulated more than a hundred years ago, has its full force today. This was demonstrated after a star, called S2, crossed a distance of nearly 20,000 million kilometers from the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. In this sense, the movement of light radiated by the star underwent an alteration of its wavelength, due to the force of gravity that the black hole exerted on it.

The black hole in the center of the Milky Way

The black hole referred [VIDEO] is named Sagittarius A, and is more than 26 000 light years from Earth.

For its part, it is stated that this black hole has a mass of 4 million times the mass of our sun, which exerts a huge gravitational force on the neighboring stars. The gravity of the celestial body brings the stars that revolve around them to reach speeds of up to 25 million kilometers per hour

The increase in wavelength in the visible spectrum of light from the star, due to gravity, confirm a physical phenomenon called "gravitational redshift". The name derives from the fact that the wave moves towards the red spectrum of light. In turn, this shift of light waves, by the effect of gravity, had been stated only from a theoretical point of view. Until May of this year, this phenomenon could not be verified in terms of reality.

The shift of light to the red is part of the theory of general relativity, and since its formulation in 1905, Einstein the difficult task of dismantling and rejecting theorems of Newtonian physics, which asserted that the light does not fit. Was not affected by the force of gravity. [VIDEO]

26 years of efforts to verify a theory

The astronomical phenomenon was observable thanks to the efforts of more than 26 years of work, led by a team of physicists, Astronomers and scientists who used the instruments of the European Organization for astronomical research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO for its acronym in English). These instruments, mainly telescopes, are located in the North Zone of Chile and are used for the study of astrophysics

Reinhard Genzel, head of the multinational team who made the necessary steps to verify the theory of astrophysics. Light shift, because of the force of gravity, noted that: " This is the second time we have observed the near S2 pass around the black hole in our galactic center, but this time , because we have with better instrumentation, we could observe the star with unprecedented resolution . "

With this discovery, it is once again shown that the postulates of Einstein were correct, even though humanity took over a hundred years to verify it.