The Filipina Who Proved Einstein Right

My father recently brought home a Filipino-Canadian newspaper from Canada and on it was an article entitled "The Filipina Who Proved Einstein Right." It was an article on Dr. Reinabelle Reyes which refers to her work on how galaxies are clustered together as would be predicted by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.

The original article is found here in Rappler.com.


In science, part of the work is to prove/disprove or even improve concepts and theories so that they would become a reliable basis on our understanding of the universe. Take, for example, the concept of a Sun-centered view of our solar system - it took more than a decade and lots of scientists who have lived and died to overthrow the Earth-centered view. Every time a scientist argues they add new concepts or data that strengthens the theory.

Likewise, in modern physics, most theories are theoretical and based on our knowledge and understanding of universe. For every theory we try to put it to a test by subjecting it to experiments to verify it or see its applications in other situations in nature. What Dr. Reinabelle Reyes did was use Einstein's understanding of gravity and apply it to some situations in the universe to see if the predictions match the observations.