Cosmologic philosophy: more general relativity proof (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, June 28, 2018, 19:14 (2340 days ago) @ David Turell

Tested in a three star system:

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-einstein-theory-gravity-extreme-conditions.html

"Einstein's theory has passed all tests in laboratories and elsewhere in our solar system. But scientists know that quantum mechanics behaves differently, so Einstein's theory has to break somewhere. Does this principle also hold for objects with extreme gravity?

"The answer is "yes," according to an international team of astronomers, including one from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They have tested the question with the help of three stars orbiting each other in a natural "laboratory" about 4,200 light years from Earth.

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"Their test subject is a triple star system called PSR J0337+1715, consisting of a neutron star in a 1.6-day orbit with a white dwarf. This pair is in a 327-day orbit with another white dwarf farther away.

"About the size of a planet, a white dwarf is a star that hasexhausted its nuclear fuel and only the hot core remains. While white dwarfs are small and dense, nothing beats the density of a neutron star, which is a cinder left over after a burned-out star has exploded. Its gravity has crushed the massive remains into a remnant the size of a city.

"The neutron star becomes a pulsar when it spins rapidly and has a strong magnetic field. Pulsars emit radio waves, X-rays or even optical light with each rotation.

"The researchers made the measurement just by tracking the neutron star, a pulsar.

"'It rotates 366 times per second, and beams of radio waves rotate along," said Anne Archibald, the paper's first author at ASTRON and the University of Amsterdam. "They sweep over the Earth at regular intervals, like a cosmic lighthouse. We have used these radio pulses to track the position of the neutron star."

"When the pulsar moves, something is causing it, said David Kaplan, an associate professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a co-author on the paper. "If Einstein is correct, it has to be the gravity of the white dwarf it's circling that's making the pulsar move."

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"'We've done better with this system than previous tests by a factor of 10," said Kaplan. "But it's not an ironclad answer. Reconciling gravity with quantum mechanics is still unresolved.'"

Comment: Can't refute Einstein as yet, perhaps never.