Astronomers have discovered a stunning, rare example of an “Einstein cross” splitting and magnifying light from the far depths of the universe.
- One foreground elliptical galaxy, around 6 billion light-years from Earth, has warped and quadrisected a bright beam of light from a background galaxy about 11 billion light-years from our planet.
Gravitational lensing
- Gravitational lensing is one of astronomy’s great wonders: a natural lens that magnifies the distant universe.
- A gravitational lens can occur when a huge amount of matter, like a cluster of galaxies, creates a gravitational field that distorts and magnifies the light from distant galaxies that are behind it but in the same line of sight.
- The effect is like looking through a giant magnifying glass. It allows researchers to study the details of early galaxies too far away to be seen with current technology and telescopes.
- Sometimes a lensing system takes the shape of a so-called “Einstein Cross”. Those are rare and amazingly useful ways to study objects far away in space and time.
- Einstein’s theory of general relativity describes the way massive objects warp the fabric of the universe, called space-time. Gravitational lensing is a dramatic and observable example of Einstein’s theory in action.
- An important example of the gravitational lens effect is the Einstein ring phenomenon.
