Her black hole research confirms Einstein's relativity on a massive scale

For the past 23 years, Andrea Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, has been collecting data on stars that orbit black holes. She found that their motion provided an opportunity to test the fundamental laws of physics. “We asked how gravity behaves near a supermassive black hole and whether Einstein’s theory is telling us the full story.” Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity holds that what we perceive as the force of gravity arises from the curvature of space and time. “In Newton’s version of gravity, space and time are separate, and do not co-mingle; under Einstein, they get completely co-mingled near a black hole,” she said. Ghez's research is among the most detailed studies yet conducted into the supermassive black hole and general relativity. https://talkingeyesmedia.org/ The Short Film Showcase spotlights exceptional short videos created by filmmakers from around the world and selected by National Geographic editors. We look for work that affirms National Geographic's belief in the power of science, exploration, and storytelling to change the world. To submit a film for consideration, please email sfs@natgeo.com. The filmmakers created the content presented, and the opinions expressed are their own, not those of National Geographic Partners.
On October 6, 2020, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to two groups for new discoveries related to black holes. Half the prize went to Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford, and the other half was split between Andrea Ghez, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Reinhard Genzel, of UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Penrose received the award for his theoretical work demonstrating that black holes can result from Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Ghez and Genzel share the award for their discovery of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that lurks at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Ghez is now the fourth woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics in the award’s 119-year-long history. This story, published in July 2019, is about Ghez’s recent research measuring gravity near supermassive black holes, which continues to put Einstein’s general theory of relativity to the test.

What happens when a star has a close encounter with a supermassive black hole? It gives astronomers a chance to put Einstein to the test.

By looking at how a star behaves as it whips around the black hole parked in the center of our galaxy, scientists have confirmed that the object’s intense gravitational field puts the brakes on starlight, causing a noticeable delay in its journey through the cosmos. This measurement is the best way to test a key prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which suggests that light will lose energy as it struggles to move through an extreme gravitational field.

“This kind of experiment is the first direct test of how gravity works

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