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Newton's theory is less good
With ESO researchers Very Large Telescope the star S2 peeked into the black hole in the middle of Melkweg. For the first time, the effects on the motion of a star that crosses an extremely strong gravitational field in our Milky Way have been observed.
Ster S2
The nearest super-heavy black hole is 26,000 light-years away from the Milky Way. This black hole, which has four million times more mass than the sun, is surrounded by a small group of stars that revolve around it at high speed. Thanks to new infrared observations with extremely sensitive instruments, astronomers could now follow one of these stars, S2, while getting very close to the hole. At the closest moment, the star was less than 20 billion kilometers from the black hole and had a speed of more than 25 million kilometers at the time
This artistic print shows the way that follows the S2 star while the black hole in the center of the Milky Way passes a short distance. Image: ESO
Predictions
Subsequently, astronomers examined the results and compared them to predictions of Newtonian gravity, general relativity, and other theories of gravity. And Einstein is still there until now; the results are fully consistent with the predictions of the general theory of relativity. However, the results are contrary to the Newtonian predictions.
Einstein's theory of relativity
Einstein predicts that light is stretched when it comes from a strong gravitational field, this is also called redshift. If the star is getting closer to the black hole, its very strong gravitational field makes the color of the star move slightly to the red. And the change in the wavelength of the light of S2 clearly shows it. More than a century after Einstein published his article explaining the equations of general relativity, Einstein was right again.
S2
S2 crosses a very eccentric orbit and approaches the black hole once in the 16 years to less than twenty billion kilometers – or 120 times the distance from the earth to the sun. It is expected that another relativistic effect will be observed in the short term: a slight rotation of the star 's orbit, also known as the Schwarzschild precession. This will happen when S2 will move away from the black hole
The researchers are very satisfied. "This is the second time that we observe the dense passage of S2 along the black hole in our galactic center." But thanks to improved instrumentation, we were able to observe this star with a unprecedented resolution this time, "says researcher Reinhard Genzel." We have been intensely prepared for this event in recent years because we wanted to make the most of this unique opportunity to observe general relativistic effects. "[19659013]
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