STARS MAGNIFY OTHERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 32, 8 February 1937, Page 10

STARS MAGNIFY OTHERS

Professor Einstein’s Theory

Professor Albert Einstein recently gave the world another mathematical discovery, a celestial wonder new to astronomy, showing] that the space near a star is a magnifying glass. It means that one star can, with improved astronomical instruments, be a magnifying glass, or telescope, lor better seeing ot another more distant star. The reason, he explains, is the bending of light rays when they pass near the sun or any other massive star. The rays, he finds, collect iu this space as they would in a lens. Then at certain distant points the rays so collected are focussed, like the focus of a spy glass, opera glass or telescope.

Human eyes, at the right point in space, would see this star-focussed image. There are stars suitably lined up, one far behind the other, to be seen in this manner from earth. But Professor Einstein points out that present optical equipment and present resolving power of telescopes is not sufficient to make these space images visible.

Star magnifying glasses go back to the eclipse of the suu in 1919 which

was the first verification of Dr. Eiil» stein a general theory of relativity. Stars whose light passed close the sun during eclipse, were photographed Six months later, when agai© in the same position, but with the emu no longei near them, they were rephotugraphed on the same plates. Th© star rays did not fall on the same places in the photographic plates showing that the rays bad been defiert<d toward the sun, when they passed close to it during the eclipse This verified Dr. Einstein’s piediction. Applying this bending of light, Professor Einstein says it one star is directly behind another, the magnification will show th<- distant star as a halo of light around the near-by one. The halo focuses, however, at a point a vast distance beyond the lens star. Closer to the nearby fetar and jirt off the line that focuses the halo. Dr. Einstein further states, is another point where two stars would appear to Hie The second kind of magnification when two stars are seen, he says, will give a brighter image of the more distant star.