Einstein’s theory of relativity passes yet another test

More than a century after Albert Einstein proposed it, his theory of general relativity passes another test.

With giant telescopes pointed at the center of our galaxy, a team of European researchers observed a fast-moving star that got close to a monstrous black hole. They saw that the black hole distorted the light waves from the star in a way that agrees with Einstein’s theory.

The result is reported in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Einstein’s theory says the fabric of the universe is not simply space, but a more complex entity called space-time, which is warped by the presence of heavy objects.

Black holes offer a good opportunity to test that idea. The one that lies at the heart of the Milky Way is 4 million times as massive as our sun.

The new study “feels like we’re kind of beating a dead horse,” says Ohio State University astrophysicist Paul Sutter, who wasn’t part of the research team led by Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.

“I, just like every physicist in the world, would have loved to finally see a crack in Einstein’s relativity,” Sutter says. “But he’s outsmarted us.”

Scientists know that the theory still doesn’t explain everything about the universe. So they keep testing it time and again. So far, nobody has been able to overthrow it.

— AP