The universe is a adult place , filled with aim and structures so with child that their hoi polloi deform the light that pass away by , sharpening the photons exhale from more distant light sources . These “ gravitational lens ” can reveal very ancient parts of the world , which otherwise would be too fuzzy or faint for Earth - based observers to spot .
Now , a team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has spotted a constellation of galaxies they conceive are an especially keen gravitative lens . The lense — now dubbed the Carousel Lens — consists of seven backdrop galaxy around a core foreground galax cluster , as well as a smattering of other lensed sources on its fringe .
The lens is “ a chance alignment of multiple galaxies across a line - of - sight spanning most of the observable universe , ” explained David Schlegel , an astrophysicist at Berkeley Lab and co - author of the newspaper , in a laboratoryrelease . “ Finding one such conjunction is a acerate leaf in the haystack . Finding all of these is like eight needles precisely lined up inside that haystack . ”
A Hubble Space Telescope view of the Carousel Lens.Image: William Sheu/UCLA
Gravitational lenses are useful for seeing ancient igniter sourceslike the oldest known staror asupernova that reappearedin the sky multiple times as its bent light source read unlike paths to Earth . The unique overlay of the Carousel Lens makes it a peculiarly hard gravitational genus Lens .
The enquiry squad also father a computational model of the lens and figure the approximate distances of the galaxies . The lensing cluster is about five billion light - years from Earth , and its seven beetleweed are anywhere between 2.6 to 7 billion light - long time beyond that — so up to 12 billion light - years into the past , according to the subject field , publishedlast hebdomad inThe Astrophysical Journal .
“ As they appear through the lense , the multiple images of each of the setting galaxies form about concentric rotary patterns around the foreground lens , as in a carousel , ” said Xiaosheng Huang , a physicist and astronomer at the University of San Francisco and co - generator of the study , in the same loss . “ It ’s an unprecedented discovery , and the computational model mother shows a extremely bright prospect for assess the property of the universe , include those of dark affair and benighted energy . ”
Some gravitational lenses formEinstein ring , or near - perfect circle of light in the sky ; last year , a team found signatures in Einstein rings that intimate axion - similar dark affair may inhabit the screen background wandflower . In the recent squad ’s lens , anEinstein Crossindicates the symmetrical distribution of mass ( including dark topic ) across the lense .
The newfangled lens system will allow researcher to study the nature of dark matter and dark energy , which together make up about 95 % of the universe , according to NASA . That ’s right : all we ’ve ever observed only accounts for 5 % of everything . But now we have another windowpane into the intimate workings of that everything .
saturnine mattergravitational lenseshubble scope
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