Einstein's 'Impossible Hope' Comes True: Weighing a Star With Gravity (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Einstein's 'Impossible Hope' Comes True: Weighing a Star With Gravity

Caption

This illustration reveals how the gravity of a white dwarf star warps space and bends the light of a distant star behind it. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the June 9, 2017, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by K.C. Sahu at Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., and colleagues was titled, 'Relativistic deflection of background starlight measures the mass of a nearby white dwarf star.'

Credit

NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

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