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The Kepler telescope witnessed the theory of relativity as a white dwarf warps spacetime.?

Just got a notification regarding this on fb and you can Read more about it here: http://bit.ly/16G1WjB

but its not so clear explanation can anybody throw some light on this topic . can it be said that the Einstein's theory of relativity is finally proved and hence true ? any views about it.

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  • gp4rts
    Lv 7
    8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Einstein's theories of relativity have been proved repeatedly. The effect of "gravitational lensing" has been observed many times, and is now used to form images of stars behind massive objects. In the article mentioned, the gravitational lensing produced by the white dwarf (the massive object) focuses the light from the red dwarf in the same way the sun's light can be intensified with a magnifying glass. Thus more light was observed when the white dwarf passed in front of the red dwarf; if the lensing did not occur, then white dwarf should block some light and reduce the amount of light from the red dwarf. However, the white dwarf is bright and its own light adds to that of the red star, so there is an increase in intensity during transit. The key here is that the increase in intensity was more than expected from the brightness of the white dwarf alone.

    Einstein's General Theory of Relativity showed that light will be bent by gravitational fields; bending of light is the same thing a lens does (through refraction) to intensify light.

  • Anonymous
    8 years ago

    Nothing is Science is either "Proved" or "True". These features are found only in Philosophy and Religion.

    Science suffers from lack of Holy Writ to prevent thinking, and the only tool it has is quantitative prediction, subject to experimental disproof.

    Gravitational lensing is old news, starting with Eddington's observation in 1919. Kepler was looking for planets, and instead found a light bright star orbiting a darker heavier companion star. They simply describe in this story how gravitational lensing provides the larger-than-Newton-would-predict variations that were observed.

    Relativity is known to be wrong. The most glaring place is it is a classical theory, so it cannot do quantum anything. It is excellent in the scales dust to solar system, and beyond this the things we do not know limit how much farther we can go without Dark Matter and Dark Energy (at which point we can model the displayed history of the Universe).

    We just have the tools of Man here, and how loud Nature's laughter is when we guess wrong.

  • This is not a first, really. Gravitational lensing has been seen in distant galaxies, and even in our own sun although it's extremely tiny. No one really talks about proof with theories like relativity, they just become well-established as more evidence is found to support them.

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