ESO proves Einstein's Theory Right

  /M. Kornmesser

The European Southern Observatory(ESO) has been able to prove the correctness of the Einstein's theory. This has become possible due to the observations made on a Supermassive Black Hole,4 million times the mass of Sun.


A group of scientists consisting of collaborators from Paris Obseravtory-PSL, the Universite Grenoble Alpes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy,the Portugese CENTRA,CNRS and the ESO lead by Reinhard Genzel from Max Planck Institute had a close watch on a star named S2. This star was orbiting a supermassive black hole present in the center of our own, Milky Way Galaxy. The star S2 was being observed for a much long time ,about 26 years, during its journey. The scientists were waiting for the star to pass by the giant black hole and making preparations from the beginning of the 2018.

Proof of Einstein's Theory of Relativity-

Path of S2 around the Black Hole (src:@ESO)

According to the Einstein's Relativity Theory an extremely large gravitational field pulls the wavelength of the particle passing by to the higher side(Gravitational Red Shift). And this is what exactly happened on 19 May,2018. The star S2 crossed the black hole at a very close distance of 20 billion kilometers moving with a speed equal to 3 % of the speed of light. When S2 reached near to the black hole, the light emitted by it changed its color from white to reddish orange. This was a clear depiction of the Relativity Theorem and thus proved its correctness.

Efforts Behind the Success-


The scientists required a very large and powerful telescope for viewing sharp and clear images. For this they had to do a lot of innovative telescope hardwork. The lights from all the four telescopes present at the Paris observatory was combined by gravity instrument making a large telescope of 100 cm diameter. This telescope had the power to view an astronaut standing on the moon flashing a torch. This was the perfect thing that was required. With this extremely high end instrument the scientists viewed this extraordinary phenomenon and proved the Einstein's equation right. The leader Reinhard Genzel said,"We have been preparing intensely for this event over several years, as we wanted to make the most of this opportunity to observe general relativistic effects".

Francoise Deplancke,head of the System Engineering Department at ESO, said,"Here in the Solar System we can only test the laws of physics now and under certain circumstances. So it's very important in astronomy to also check that those laws are valid where the gravitational field is very much stronger." The scientists will now be using S2 to prove the Schwarzschild precession, an external gravitational associated with a stationary planetary body.

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