Arquivo para June 13th, 2017
Observed the General Relativity in space
13
Jun
In a rare phenomenon observed in telescopes, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, observed the position of a distant star to rotate slightly, while its light tilted around a white dwarf in the line of sight of observers on Earth, phenomena Caused by the General Theory of Relativity, and it is published in Nature.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, he observed the light folding due to the gravity of a nearby white dwarf star, led by Kailash Sahu, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who saw its light tilting around a white dwarf, Amount of distortion it was possible for the researchers to directly calculate the mass of the white dwarf which is 67% that of the Sun.
Sahu’s team studied a white dwarf known as Stein 2051 B in the constellation Camelopardalis, it is 17 light-years from Earth, being the 6th. White dwarf closest to the earth
In eight observations between October 2013 and October 2015, the background star seemed to shift back and forth slightly, it is equivalent to a person in London watching an ant crawl across a coin in Moscow, but it was enough to confirm that the gravity of Stein 2051 B was bending the light of the background star.
In 1919, British astronomer Arthur Eddington and his team watched light bending around the Sun during a total solar eclipse, confirming Einstein’s theory. Researchers have since seen light from distant galaxies bending around the gravity of intervening galaxies, but the new work is the first time anyone has observed a single object — the white dwarf — seemingly cause a background star to shift.
Sahu’s team has already started another project to look for this phenomenon using Proxima Centauri, which at 1.3 parsecs (4 light-years) away is the nearest star to Earth. It is passing a background star now, and the team has obtained a couple of observations with Hubble, Sahu says.
