Testing General Relativity

November 18, 2015 • by Marc Airhart

Scientists from UT Austin once traveled to the Sahara Desert to observe a rare eclipse and used computers to model ripples in space and time unleashed by the mergers of black holes

A man stands on a ladder outside a white hut in the desert

A team from the University of Texas at Austin constructed a temporary telescope house from plywood and styrofoam in the Sahara Desert to observe the bending of starlight by the sun during a total solar eclipse in June 1973. Photo: Richard Matzner.


Illustration of two black holes spiraling around each other

Binary white dwarfs spiral together, creating gravity waves, in this illustration from NASA. Credit: D. Berry/NASA GSF

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