In a new study published in the journal Science, scientists have achieved a rare event - proving that Albert Einstein was right and wrong at the same time. Scientists were able to confirm one of Einstein's theories, but he himself was not even sure that this could be observed.
The research topic was the effect of the so-called gravitational microlensing. His idea is that supermassive objects like stars can bend light passing near them. The object's gravity actually works as a kind of lens, deforming the direction of the high beam. Einstein predicted this in his general theory of relativity, but he also noticed that the effect requires a very exact match of a specific set of parameters, so he believed that we could never observe it directly.
But Einstein's pessimism about this was dispelled because our technologies are more advanced than they were in his time, and today the effect of microlensing is quite detectable.
Researchers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope observed a star - the so-called white dwarf - the remnant of a star's core near the end of its life, which was supposed to pass in front of another distant star. When this happened, the white dwarf seemed to knock another star out of its way. Although this actually did not happen. The white dwarf's gravity simply warped the light of the background star.
In addition to being just really cool, the new method also allowed astronomers to measure the mass of a star through curvature. The intensity of the deflection of a light beam can help scientists determine the mass and gravity of an object. In the course of the study, astronomers were able to calculate the mass of the white dwarf based on the effect of gravitational microlensing, which they previously could not observe.