- 3958 - EINSTEIN - theories proven correct? Albert Einstein's theories of relativity have been proven to be true time and again in the more than 100 years. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational lensing 100 years before the James Webb Space Telescope used the phenomenon to peer 13 billion years into the past.
------------------ 3958 - EINSTEIN - theories proven correct?
- Albert Einstein, born March 14, 1879,
entered a world where the dwarf planet Pluto had yet to be discovered, and the
idea of spaceflight was a distant dream. Despite the technical limitations of
his time, Einstein published his famous theory of general relativity in 1915,
which made predictions about the nature of the universe that would be proven
accurate time and again for more than 100 years to come.
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- Einstein's theory of general relativity
describes gravity as a consequence of the warping of space-time; basically, the
more massive an object is, the more it will curve space-time and cause smaller
objects to fall toward it.
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- The theory also predicts the existence of
black holes, massive objects that warp
space-time so much that not even light can escape them.
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- When researchers using the Event Horizon
Telescope (EHT) captured the first-ever image of a black hole, they proved
Einstein was right about some very specific things, that each black hole has a
point of no return called an event horizon, which should be roughly circular
and of a predictable size based on the mass of the black hole. The EHT's
groundbreaking black hole image showed this prediction was exactly right.
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- Astronomers proved Einstein's black hole
theories correct yet again when they discovered a strange pattern of X-rays
being emitted near a black hole 800 million light-years from Earth. In addition
to the expected X-ray emissions flashing from the front of the black hole, the
team also detected the predicted "luminous echoes" of X-ray light,
which were emitted behind the black hole but still visible from Earth due to
the way the black hole bent space-time around it.
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- Einstein's theory of relativity also
describes enormous ripples in the fabric of space-time called gravitational
waves. These waves result from mergers between the most massive objects in the
universe, such as black holes and neutron stars.
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- Using a special detector called the “Laser
Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory” (LIGO), physicists confirmed the
existence of gravitational waves in 2015, and have continued to detect dozens
of other examples of gravitational waves in the years since.
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- Studying gravitational waves can reveal
the secrets of the massive, distant objects that released them. By studying the
gravitational waves emitted by a pair of slowly colliding binary black holes in
2022, physicists confirmed that the massive objects wobbled, or precessed, in
their orbits as they swirled ever closer to one another, just as Einstein
predicted.
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- Scientists saw Einstein's theory of
precession in action yet again after studying a star orbiting a supermassive
black hole for 27 years. After completing two full orbits of the black hole,
the star's orbit was seen to "dance" forward in a rosette pattern
rather than moving in a fixed elliptical orbit. This movement confirmed
Einstein's predictions about how an extremely small object should orbit around
a comparatively gargantuan one.
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- It's not just black holes that bend
space-time around them; the ultra-dense husks of dead stars can do it too. In
2020, physicists studied how a neutron star orbited around a white dwarf (two
types of collapsed, dead stars) for the previous 20 years, finding a long-term
drift in the way the two objects orbited each other.
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- This drift was likely caused by an effect
called “frame dragging”; essentially, the white dwarf had tugged on space-time
enough to slightly alter the neutron star's orbit over time.
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- According to Einstein, if an object is
sufficiently massive, it should bend space-time in such a way that distant
light emitted behind the object will appear magnified (as seen from Earth).
This effect is called “gravitational lensing”, and has been used extensively to
hold a magnifying glass up to objects in the deep universe.
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- The James Webb Space Telescope's first
deep field image used the gravitational lensing effect of a galaxy cluster 4.6
billion light-years away to significantly magnify the light from galaxies more
than 13 billion light-years away.
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- One form of gravitational lensing is so
vivid that physicists couldn't help but put Einstein's name on it. When the
light from a distant object is magnified into a perfect halo around a massive
foreground object, scientists call it an "Einstein ring." These
stunning objects exist all throughout space, and have been imaged by
astronomers and citizen scientists alike.
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- As light travels across the universe, its
wavelength shifts and stretches in several different ways, known as “redshift”.
The most famous type of redshift is due to the expansion of the universe.
Einstein proposed a number called the “cosmological constant” to account for
this apparent expansion in his other equations.
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- Einstein also predicted a type of
"gravitational redshift," which occurs when light loses energy on its
way out of a depression in space-time created by massive objects, such as
galaxies. In 2011, a study of the light from hundreds of thousands of distant
galaxies proved that gravitational redshift truly does exist.
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- Relativity suggests that the speed of light
is constant in a vacuum, meaning that space should look the same from every
direction. In 2015, researchers proved this effect is true even on the smallest
scale, when they measured the energy of two electrons moving in different
directions around an atom's nucleus. The energy difference between the
electrons remained constant, no matter which direction they moved, confirming
that piece of Einstein's theory.
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- In a phenomenon called “quantum
entanglement”, linked particles can seemingly communicate with each other
across vast distances faster than the speed of light, and only
"choose" a state to inhabit once they are measured.
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- Einstein hated this phenomenon, famously
deriding it as "spooky action-at-a-distance," and insisted that no
influence can travel faster than light, and that objects have a state whether
we measure them or not.
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- But in a massive, global experiment in
which millions of entangled particles were measured around the world,
researchers found that the particles seemed to only pick a state the moment
they were measured, and no sooner.
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- This showed that Einstein's world-view… in
which things have properties whether or not you observe them, and no influence
travels faster than light, cannot be true, at least one of those things must be
false.
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April 13,
2023 EINSTEIN -
theories proven correct?
3959
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