Quickest Star Orbiting a Black Hole
What do recently discovered stars orbiting close to the black hole at the core of our galaxy tell us about relativistic effects?
In a recently published paper in The Astrophysical Journal, a team of European astrophysicists has published results of studying stars orbiting around the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy (Sgr A*). S4711, a cluster of stars determined to be closest in orbit around the black hole are “perfect candidates to observe gravitational effects” and the impact they have on a star as it orbits quickly around the supermassive black hole (Peißker et al., 2020). Scientists are interested in these stars to observe a few different phenomena. One of the phenomena that interest scientists are how the speed of these stars is impacting the shape of their orbit. Another is the degree that the shape of the orbit helps test the effects of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity on these super-fast stars.
In August 2017 a paper by Andreas Parsa, Vladimir Karas, and their team, analyzed the degree these stars obits have shifted. They compared it with the speed of these stars relative to the speed of the light, known as the relativistic parameter. Interestingly, the team discovered a correlation. This suggests that the obit of these stars super close to…
