Khalifa University research predicts new effect for proving the existence of Cosmic Strings

  • Date: 17-Feb-2021
  • Source: Gulf Today
  • Sector:Education
  • Country:UAE
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Khalifa University research predicts new effect for proving the existence of Cosmic Strings

A team of researchers from Khalifa University has used the theory of General Relativity to figure out a new way to detect cosmic strings across the universe. The team applied the concept of 'gravitational lensing' to a family of pairs of black holes connected by a cosmic string in what is known as a C-metric, and computed the first ever lensing formula that can be coupled with existing technologies to chart our universe. Dr. Davide Batic, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Maha Alrais Alawadi, student from the Department of Mathematics, and Dr. Marek Nowakowski, Associate Professor from the Universidad de los Andes, Columbia, published their work last month in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity. According to Einstein, the presence of a mass deforms the space-time geometry in such a way that light rays passing nearby get deflected. This is the idea behind gravitational lensing, where rays of light bend near sources of gravitation, such as stars. The greater the mass, the greater the gravity and the closer to the source of gravity, the greater the bending. This effect was observed for the first time in 1919, when English physicist Arthur Eddington measured the position of stars near the Sun before