STARS MAGNIFY OTHERS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 13, 30 January 1937, Page 11

STARS MAGNIFY OTHERS

Professor Einstein's Theory

Brofessor Albert Einstein recentlv aave 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, for better seeing of another, more distant star. The reason, he explains, is the bending of light rays when they pass uear the 6un or any other massive star. The rays, he finds, collect in 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, onc far behind the other, to he seen in this manner from earth. But Professor Einstein points out that present optieal 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 sun in 1919 which

was the first verificatxon of Dr. Einstein's general theory of relativity. Stars, whose light passed close to the sun during eclipse, were photo graphed. Six months later, when again in the saine position, but with the sun no longer near them, "they were xephotographed on the same plates. . The star rays did not . fall on the same places in the photdgraphic plates, showing that the rays had been deflected - toward the sun, when. they passed close to it during the eclipse. This verified Dr. Einstein's prediction. Applying this bending of light, Professor . Einstein says if one star.is directly behind another, the magnification . wilj snow the distant star as a halo of light around the near-by one. . The halo foeuses, however, at a point a vast distance beyond the lens star. Closec to the nearby star and just off the line that foeuses the halo, Dr. Einstein further states, is another point where two stars would appear to the eye. The second kind of m agjiification. when two stars are seen, he "says, will give a hrighter jmage^oTthe^more distant star.