Star Zooms Past Monster Black Hole, Confirms Relativity

[Judi Lynn]

By Chelsea Gohd, Space.com Contributor | July 27, 2018 11:41am ET

For the first time ever, researchers have watched a star race past the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, verifying that its motion showed the effects of general relativity, as predicted by Albert Einstein.

The stars of the Milky Way orbit a gargantuan black hole called Sagittarius A*, which is generally quiet as viewed from Earth, except for ripping apart the occasional object that ventures too close. The black hole's mass is 4 million times that of the sun, and it exhibits our galaxy's strongest gravitational field, making it — and a small group of stars orbiting it at high speed — a perfect proving ground for the extreme effects predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

For 26 years, researchers have been observing the center of the Milky Way using instruments from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). "The galactic center was our laboratory to test gravity," Odele Straub, an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory and co-author of the new study, said at an ESO news conference July 26. [Einstein's Theory of Relativity Explained (Infographic)]

Astronomers have used new infrared observations from the GRAVITY, SINFONI and NACO instruments on ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile to follow a star, known as S2, which is part of a group of fast-moving stars orbiting the supermassive black hole, located 26,000 light-years from Earth.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/63184-relativity-revealed-milky-way-core.html

[lastlib]

1. Very Cool, Judi Lynn!

Love your science posts! (You're as important to this DUer as SalmonChantedEvening!) --