Einstein's Supermassive Black Hole Theory Gets Confirmed By Scientists

A team of international scientists have observed motion of stars near a supermassive black hole. The experiment was conducted at the European Southern Observatory. This is the first time they have confirmed predictions of Einstein of what happens to the motion of a star when it is near to a supermassive black hole. This general theory of relativity is 100 years old. He predicted that light from stars would be stretched to longer wavelengths due to high gravitational field of a black hole. This can make the star redder. He termed this effect to be gravitational red shift. Frank Eisenhauer, a senior astronomer at the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial physics said that Einstein couldn't even think or dream of what we experienced today.

Scientists at European Southern Observatory started the monitoring of Milky Way's central area 26 years ago using their very large telescope. They selected one star, S2, to follow. The star has an orbit of 16 years which means it would be close to black hole in 2018. The black has 4 million time mass than Sun and is located 26,000 light years away from our planet. They were able to note down extreme precise measurements in May 2018. All of this was also due to an improvement in the accuracy of the instruments in 20 years.

The team hopes to continue on this road for a long time to come.

By: Neha Maheshwari

Content: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/scientists-confirm-einsteins-supermassive-black-hole-theory/article24539392.ece