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Milky Way’s black hole provides long-sought test of Einstein’s general relativity

An observation decades in the making confirms predictions about how light behaves in an immense gravitational field.
  1. Alexandra Witze
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Astronomers have caught the giant black hole at our galaxy’s centre stretching the light emitted by an orbiting star — nearly three decades after they first starting tracking the star. The long-sought phenomenon, known as gravitational redshift, was predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but until now it had never been detected in the environs of a black hole.

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Nature 560, 17 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05825-3

Updates & Corrections

  • Update 26 July 2018: This story has been updated with quotes from Odele Straub and Frank Eisenhauer.

  • Correction 26 July 2018: An earlier version of this story stated that the star S2 made its closest pass by the galactic centre’s black hole on 18 May. In fact, it was 19 May.

References

  1. Abuter, R. et al. Astron. Astrophys. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833718 (2018).

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