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The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the incredible “Einstein’s Ring” 3.4 billion light years from Earth.
This cosmic display, formally known as the “gravitational lens,” occurs when the gravitational field of a massive object in space distorts the light from the source and changes the direction of light movement, an effect similar to that caused by a lens. The result is then “Einstein’s ring”, which was predicted by the famous physicist Albert Einstein, in 1915.
The image shows six light points grouped together in the center, four of which form a circle around a central binary.
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However, the formation only consists of two galaxies and a distant quasar which is magnified as it passes through the gravitational fields of the galaxies.
As researchers at the European Space Agency explain: “Appearances can be deceptive. This formation does not consist of six individual galaxies, but only three. To be precise, a pair of galaxies and a distant quasar.
The quasar, known as 2M1310-1714, is located farther from Earth than the two galaxies.
A quasar is the very bright core of an active galaxy, and its strong glow is caused by the massive amounts of energy radiating from the gas falling into the supermassive black hole at its center.
“The light emitted by the quasar is bent around the two galaxies due to their enormous masses, giving the incredible impression that the two galaxies are surrounded by four quasars, when in fact a quasar is far from them”, the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement.
In 1915, Einstein claimed that gravity is the result of massive objects distorting the fabric of the universe, which he called space-time.
Experts have since been able to test his theory of general relativity inside the solar system and prove his pioneering work is under scrutiny, with hundreds of “Einstein rings.”
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“General relativity predicts that massive objects distort space-time. This means that when light passes close to another galaxy, it is so close to another galaxy”, Thomas Collette, of the Institut de cosmology and gravity from the University of Portsmouth, which discovered another “Einstein ring” in 2018, said in a statement. The path of light is deviated. If two galaxies are aligned along our line of sight, it could lead to a phenomenon called strong gravitational lensing, where we see multiple images of the background galaxy. “
If we know the mass of the foreground galaxy, the amount of separation between multiple images tells us whether general relativity is the correct theory of galactic-scale gravity.
Data from the Hubble Telescope identified a seventh spot of light in the center, a rare fifth image of the distant quasar.
A few hundred powerful gravitational lenses are known, but most of them are too far away from the precise measurement of mass. This rare phenomenon is caused by the presence of two galaxies in the center that act like lenses.
Source: Daily Mail
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