Indian Origin Scientist Kailash Sahu and team in US used Albert Einstein’s Theory to Weigh Stars

• A team of scientists in the US has successfully weighed the mass of a white dwarf star using Einstein's predictions and theory
• The group of scientists was led by an Indian-origin astronomer Kailash Chandra Sahu
• This is the first time that the weight of a star has been measured using Einstein's theory

US, June 10, 2017: Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is a century old. Yet, every year new developments in scientific knowledge are emerging through this basic formulated theory by Einstein.

The theory of relativity has once again provided development in our knowledge of the cosmos. In the US, a group of scientists has measured the mass of a white dwarf star by using the century-old theory.

The group was led by an Indian-origin astronomer Kailash Chandra Sahu at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The team used the Hubble Space Telescope to calculate the mass. Sahu is also the lead author of the research paper.

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The essence of the study lies in the technicality used by the scientists. They observed the white dwarf star as it passed by a distant star. When the two stars closely aligned, scientists analyzed the deflection in the light of the distant star caused by the gravity of the white dwarf star. The deflection in the sky would appear offset by 2 milliarcseconds!

The deflection may be incredibly tiny but it helped the scientists calculate the dwarf's mass.

Einstein had hypothesized that a ray of light from a different star passing by an object would bend due to the gravity pull of the passing object. The study is published in the journal called Science.

– by Saksham Narula of NewsGram. Twitter: @Saksham2394