Astronomers Prove To Einstein That Stars Can Warp Light (theverge.com)

Astronomers have observed for the first time ever a distant star warp the light of another star, "making it seem as though the object changed its position in the sky," reports The Verge. The discovery is especially noteworthy as Albert Einstein didn't think such an observation would be possible. From the report: These events require stars that are very far apart to line up perfectly. That's why Einstein once wrote that "there is no hope of observing this phenomenon directly." Our telescope technology has become far more sophisticated than in Einstein's day -- which is what allowed us to observe something he thought we'd never see. In 2014, a group of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spotted a rare type of microlensing, when a dense white dwarf star passed in front of another star thousands of light-years away. The stars weren't exactly aligned, but they were close enough that the white dwarf made it seem like the background star performed a small loop in the sky. "It looks like the white dwarf pushed it out of the way," Terry Oswalt, an astronomer at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who was not involved in this discovery but wrote a perspective piece in Science, tells The Verge. "That's not what happened, of course. It just looks like that." The astronomers also used the apparent movement of the background star to measure the mass of the passing white dwarf, a novel technique detailed in a paper published today in Science. And they say this isn't the last time they'll make measurements like this either. Now that they've figured out how to spot these kinds of lensing events, they're hoping to find even more with new ground- and space-based telescopes that are coming online soon.

Comments

Not

[rodia]

The sun is a star, and the light-bending capacity of that thing has been demonstrated quite a while ago. Also, proving something to somebody dead is not possible. Are these headlines intentional bait for wisesh*ts?

Re:Not

[Anonymous Coward]

The headline is worse than that. It implies that Einstein didn't believe in the existence of the phenomenon in question, which is a pretty ridiculous implication. A much more accurate headline might have been something along the lines of "Astronomers Demonstrate Observability of Light Warping Via Previously Impractical Means." -PCP

Wtf?

[thesupraman]

Let's see.
Einstein isn't going to get anything proven to him. He is dead.
However, he showed that this should be true, why would it need to be proven to him?
Let alone the fact that gravitational lensing, which uses this exact effect, is a common technique these days.

What is the point?

Re:Wtf?

[TimothyHollins]

All the stupidity in the text can be explained with two words - "The Verge"

No shit

[locater16]

No shit? This was proven like, a century ago. And astronomers have been using gravitational lensing as a kind of natural telescope for years now. Somehow a direct observation of star to star lensing hasn't been seen before, so uhhh, cool I guess. But this isn't a scientific discovery by any means.

Observation != proof

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Proofs are possible only in mathematics. No amount of affirming observations is considered proof. One counter observation is enough to disprove.

Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity, calculated what would be observed. The apparent angular displacement due to such micro lensing turned out to be so small, he said, "such a small displacement is unlikely to be observed". He is right, even after this observation, no terrestrial telescope can hope to observe this. You need to get a telescope the size of a school bus into orbit, install a contact lens to that telescope in orbit, and point it at the right spot to see it.