Westerbork researchers prove the equality of Einstein (video) – dekrantvanmiddendrenthe.nl – News

Westerbork – A team of astronomers followed a neutron star for six years with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, United States and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, United States. This research shows that Einstein's theory of gravity, the theory of general relativity, is equally valid under extremely severe gravity.

Einstein's theory predicts that all objects fall in the same way, regardless of their weight (mass) or composition. A hammer and a spring fall on the moon with the same acceleration. And when a light and heavy cannonball is fired from the Leaning Tower, they hit the ground at the same time.

But does this principle also apply to objects with extremely high gravity? An international team of astronomers has tested this using three stars that rotate one around the other: a neutron star and two white dwarfs. Their results prove that Einstein's theory also passes the test under such extreme conditions.

Einstein's theory has passed all tests in laboratories and elsewhere in our solar system. But most alternative theories of gravity predict that objects with extremely high gravity, such as neutron stars, are different from low gravity objects.

Through the discovery of a natural cosmic laboratory, astronomers were able to test this theory in extreme conditions. In this unique system, discovered in 2012, a neutron star and a white dwarf turn in 1.6 days. And this couple revolves around a 327-day orbit around another white dwarf, far away. According to other gravitational theories, the neutron star and the inner white dwarf should fall in a different way on the outer white dwarf.

"We tested this by following the neutron star," says Anne Archibald, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam. from Amsterdam and ASTRON, the Netherlands Radio Astronomy Institute). "We can check every pulse of the neutron star since the beginning of our observations," says Archibald. "And we know its location up to a few hundred meters, so we know exactly where the neutron star was and where it goes in. If the neutron star would be different from the white dwarf, the impulses would arrive at a different time from

Archibald and his colleagues discovered that a possible difference between the neutron star's acceleration and the white dwarf is too weak to be detected. " If there is a difference, there are not more than three out of a million. says Nina Gusinskaia, PhD student at the University of Amsterdam, and that's very little, we are part of the alternative theories of gravity, and we have improved the accuracy of the best gravity test about ten times , both in the solar system and with other pulsars. "