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A stunning image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows an “Einstein’s Ring” magnifying light from the depths of the universe.
In the image, two galaxies, about 3.4 billion light years from Earth, distort and deflect the light of an even more distant galaxy behind them.
The resulting pattern, predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915, shows six points of light – two clustered in the center and four strung around a distorted ring of light. However, these bright spots are not from six galaxies but from three – two at the center of the ring and the third from a distant quasar whose light has been bent so much that it appears to be four.
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Quasars are galaxies with supermassive black holes at their core that engulf huge amounts of matter and emit so much radiation that they are more than a trillion times brighter than the brightest stars.
“The light from the quasar has been bent around the pair of galaxies due to their enormous mass, giving the incredible impression that the pair of galaxies is surrounded by four quasars – when in reality only one quasar sits at the bottom. beyond them, “European Space Agency (ESA officials) wrote in a statement.
Einstein’s general theory of relativity describes how massive objects distort the fabric of the universe, called space-time. Gravity, Einstein discovered, is not produced by an invisible force, but is simply our experience of the curvature and distortion of space-time in the presence of matter and energy.
This curved space, in turn, defines the rules of movement of energy and matter. Even though light travels in a straight line, light passing through a very curved region of space-time, such as the space around the two huge galaxies, also travels in a curve – bending around galaxies and flaring out as a halo.
Astronomers have identified hundreds of these so-called Einstein rings, and they’re not just wanted for the pretty pictures they make. As the rings work to amplify the light they bend, reconstructing the spots of light into their original, pre-bent shapes can enhance the details that astronomers are able to spot in very galaxies. distant. Additionally, because the extent to which light bends depends on the strength of the gravitational field of the object that bends it, Einstein’s rings can be used as a cosmic scale to measure the masses of galaxies and black holes. These rings can even help scientists spot, by looking for the distant light warping around them, objects that would otherwise be too dark to be seen on their own, such as black holes or wandering exoplanets.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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