MORE than a century after Albert Einstein proposed it, his theory of general relativity has passed another test.

With giant telescopes pointed at the center of our galaxy, a team of European researchers observed a fast-moving star that got close to a monstrous black hole. They saw that the black hole distorted the light waves from the star in a way that agrees with Einstein’s theory.

The result was reported Thursday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Einstein’s theory says the fabric of the universe is not simply space, but a more complex entity called space-time, which is warped by the presence of heavy objects.

Black holes offer a good opportunity to test that idea. The one that lies at the heart of the Milky Way is 4 million times as massive as our sun.

The new study “feels like we’re kind of beating a dead horse,” said Ohio State University astrophysicist Paul Sutter, who wasn’t part of the research team led by Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.  (SD-Agencies)