First successful test of Einstein's general relativity near supermassive black hole (Update)

phys.org ^ | July 26, 2018, | ESO

[Red Badger]

MULTIPLE VIDEOS AT LINK............................

[Red Badger]

Ping!....................

[Red Badger]

This diagram shows the motion of the star S2 around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. It was compiled from observations with ESO telescopes and instruments over a period of more than 25 years. The star takes 16 years to complete one orbit and was very close to the black hole in May 2018. Note that the sizes of the black hole and the star are not to scale. Credit: ESO/MPE/GRAVITY Collaboration Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-gravity-relativity-galactic-centre-massive.html#jCp

[Leaning Right]

> Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have for the first time revealed the effects predicted by Einstein’s general relativity <

Meh. I’ll reserve judgement until the data from ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope comes in.

[Rockingham]

The main video is set to music that sounds like the instrumental track from a Barry White tune from the ‘70s.

[Moonman62]

That’s appropriate.

Barry White was a massive black man.

[SgtHooper]

Right. I want to know what they “find” if their funding is about to dry up. THAT’S when we’ll see some “real” science.

[ETL]

[M Kehoe]

That graph looks like a parabola that the Vomit Comet would fly.

Just sayin

5.56mm

[M Kehoe]

Ooops. Did I orient that thing correctly?

Who cares?

5.56mm

[ETL]

Dance of the Holes

[Rockingham]

And I bet that Barry White could have come up with appropriately soulful romantic lyrics.

[IronJack]

For gravity to affect it, wouldn’t light have to have mass? Or do we attribute the Doppler shift to the bending of space by the immense gravity of the black hole?

[Red Badger]

Bent space...................

[reed13k]

I see this as a Doppler effect on the light wave caused by either decompression and/or compression. If it gets red as it approaches the blackhole, I would bet that the further away it gets the bluer the wavelength.

What is the % shift created by the gravity and what is the % shift created by the change in speed of the star?

[reed13k]

Light has mass and momentum - a photon is basically an electron moving at light speed.

Light is odd in that it behaves as both a particle and a wave.

I personally think all of creation is both particle and wave it is just a matter of spacing, frequency, and wavelength. The problem is that we don’t have the necessary instruments to perceive those that are extremely large or those that are extremely small.

[captain_dave]

That is not a test. Only interpreted observations which do not prove general relativity or black holes.

In the classic relativity thought experiment of one twin leaving on a spaceship while the other stays on Earth. What is missed is that relativity does not claim an absolute reference. So the one twin on Earth could be said to accelerate away from the twin on the "stationary" spaceship. Who gets older?

The theory has a lot of weaknesses.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Light has mass and momentum - a photon is basically an electron moving at light speed.

This should be in breaking news. Way I learned it in the Dark Ages, light had zero rest mass but a nonzero momentum because of its energy, basically. An electron had a small but nonzero rest mass.

[PAR35]

In this graphic the colour effect and size of the objects have been exaggerated for clarity.

In other words, it's fake.

[mlo]

"Light has mass and momentum - a photon is basically an electron moving at light speed."

Photons have no mass. Nothing that moves at light speed has mass.

"Light is odd in that it behaves as both a particle and a wave."

That's not odd. Everything does.