Scientists have conducted yet another successful test of the general theory of relativity and the cosmological model based on it. The article of scientists appeared in the journal Nature, and its summary is given in a press release from the University of California at Berkeley, whose employees took part in the work.

As part of the new work, about 70 thousand galaxies were studied, information about which was collected during the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). All studied objects are located at a distance of up to 3.5 billion light years from Earth.

The information obtained was used to calculate the dimensionless parameter EG, which characterizes the efficiency of the processes of gravitational lensing, the growth of galactic structures, and the formation of clusters on large cosmological scales.

As a result, scientists have found that EG is approximately equal to 4, which is in good agreement with the predictions of general relativity. However, new measurements did not allow to completely refute some alternative theories of gravity, for example, the so-called f®-theory. The fact is that EG for this theory turns out to be close enough to 4. According to scientists, additional measurements are needed to determine a more accurate value of the parameter.

More recently, astrophysicists have made the most accurate measurement of the Hubble constant to date using a gravitational lens. To do this, they studied the object B1608 + 656, which is two galaxies located almost one after the other.