1.
Science
; 365(6454): 664-668, 2019 08 16.
Artículo
en Inglés
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31346138
RESUMEN
The general theory of relativity predicts that a star passing close to a supermassive black hole should exhibit a relativistic redshift. In this study, we used observations of the Galactic Center star S0-2 to test this prediction. We combined existing spectroscopic and astrometric measurements from 1995-2017, which cover S0-2's 16-year orbit, with measurements from March to September 2018, which cover three events during S0-2's closest approach to the black hole. We detected a combination of special relativistic and gravitational redshift, quantified using the redshift parameter Ï. Our result, Ï = 0.88 ± 0.17, is consistent with general relativity (Ï = 1) and excludes a Newtonian model (Ï = 0) with a statistical significance of 5σ.