• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

First Known Double Gravitational Lens Is A Cosmic Telescope Into The Distant Universe

November 15, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

A major realization of Einstein’s general relativity is the fact that massive objects warp space-time in a way that is similar to a lens, magnifying and shifting the light of background objects. This was a crucial test for relativity just four years after it was proposed, and it has been seen in countless examples. Today, 105 years after the first test, astronomers continue to discover never-seen-before alignments. Meet the zig-zag lens.

All gravitational lenses are exciting, but some are more exciting than others. At first glance, J1721+8842 was intriguing, but it wasn’t particularly revolutionary. In this system, the light of a distant quasar traveled more than 10.5 billion years to reach us. Passing through a lens, it formed six visible images. The number six was unique, which made it interesting, the authors of the paper (which has yet to complete peer review) explain. In recent years, there was a proposal that six images could form under particular conditions – that is, having two lenses.

Advertisement

The first lens is relatively close to the source, with a distance estimated at 10.2 billion light-years. What happens is that the quasar’s light is magnified and multiplied by this massive galaxy. Two of the images are deflected in the opposite direction as they reach the second lens, another massive galaxy. The path of the light is a zig-zag between the quasar, the first lens, and then the second one, which is just 2.3 billion light-years away.

Not only that, but the second lens also magnifies the first – though not very bright, it can be seen in the images collected by JWST. The team believes this to be the first case of a double gravitational lens and the first example of a galaxy-scale strong gravitational lens with six images of the same distant object.

This is a serendipitous and extraordinary find. The researchers were curious what was the chance of finding such a precise alignment between us, two lenses, and a quasar on a single line of sight stretching over 10.5 billion light-years. They estimate it is one in 100 million.

If this was not enough, this object seems to be a cornucopia of excitement. It is the northernmost gravitational lens known, which means there are a lot of ground-based telescopes that can conduct follow-up observations. Its peculiar nature could also be used to better estimate the expansion rate of the universe – a current topic of heated debate in cosmology.

Advertisement

The paper is currently awaiting peer review from Astronomy & Astrophysics, and is currently available on the ArXiv.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-Manchester test likely to be postponed after India COVID-19 case
  2. EU to attend U.S. trade meeting put in doubt by French anger
  3. Soccer-West Ham win again, Leicester and Napoli falter
  4. Was Jesus A Hallucinogenic Mushroom? One Scholar Certainly Thought So

Source Link: First Known Double Gravitational Lens Is A Cosmic Telescope Into The Distant Universe

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • AI May Infringe On Your Rights And Insult Your Dignity (Unless We Do Something Soon)
  • How Do You Study Cryptic Species? We’re Finally Lifting The Lid On The World’s Least Understood Mammals
  • Once-In-A-Decade Close Encounter With Hazardous Asteroid 2025 FA22 Approaches
  • With 229 Pairs, This Beautiful Animal Has The Highest Number Of Chromosomes Of Any Animal
  • “An Unimaginable Breakthrough”: Loudest-Ever Gravitational Wave Collision Proves Stephen Hawking Correct
  • Exciting Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Considered Biosignatures
  • How Long Did Dinosaurs Live? “It’s A Big Surprise To People That Work On Them”
  • NASA’s Mysterious Announcement: “Clearest Sign Of Life That We’ve Ever Found On Mars”
  • New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, Raising Fears Of Mind Reading
  • “Immediate, Sustained, And Devastating” Pain: The Most Venomous Mammal Packs An Extremely Nasty Sting
  • Domestic Cats Keeping Making Hybrids. That’s A Problem, And Yes – That Includes Some Pets
  • These Strange Little Lizards Have Toxic Green Blood, And No One Knows Exactly Why
  • How Does 2-In-1 Shampoo And Conditioner Work?
  • There Are 2-Billion-Year-Old “Millennium Rocks” In A Suburb, Hundreds Of Miles From Their Primeval Home
  • “That’s A Hellfire Missile Smacking Into That UFO”: Strange Video Emerges From US UAP Hearing
  • In 40,000 Years, Voyager 1 Will Have A Close Encounter With Gliese 445
  • Abnormally Long Gamma Ray Burst Unlike Anything We’ve Seen Before Baffles Astronomers
  • Critically Endangered Shark Meat Is Being Sold In US Stores For As Little As $2.99
  • Infectious Mouth Bacteria Lurking In Artery Plaques Could Be Behind Some Heart Attacks
  • What Would You Reach If You Kept Digging Under Antarctica?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version