2023-08-04 04:00:11
A fascinating new discovery has just been made by astronomers: a rare “Einstein’s Cross”, an optical phenomenon that splits and amplifies light coming from the depths of the Universe. This phenomenon, first predicted by Albert Einstein (Albert Einstein (born March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Württemberg, died on…) in 1915, offers researchers a unique opportunity to study the most distant objects.
The newly discovered Einstein’s Cross is most likely the light from an ancient black hole, modified by the mass of a galaxy (Galaxies is a quarterly French magazine dedicated to science fiction. With…) much closer.
Credits: Cikota et al.
In this image, an elliptical galaxy in the foreground regarding 6 billion light-years from Earth has distorted and quadrupled a beam of light from a galaxy in the background regarding 11 billion light-years away. light.
This pattern, first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915, shows four patches of blue light surrounding the orange halo of the foreground galaxy. It is a rare configuration that astronomers study to better understand the Universe.
The light in the background is most likely coming from a quasar, a young galaxy whose supermassive black hole at its core is engulfing huge amounts of matter and emitting enough radiation (Radiation, synonymous with radiation in physics, means the process of emitting or…) to shine brighter than 1000 billion brightest stars.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity describes how massive objects distort space-time (The notion of space-time was introduced in the early 1900s and taken up…). Gravity is not produced by an invisible force, it is space-time itself which bends and deforms in the presence of matter and energy (In common sense, energy designates everything that allows to carry out work, to manufacture…). This curvature (Intuitively, curve is opposed to straight: the curvature of a geometric object is…) of space defines the rules of movement of energy and matter. Even light, which travels in a straight line, follows a trajectory (The trajectory is the line described by any point of a moving object, and…) deformed when it crosses (A traverse is a fundamental element It’s a piece laid across…) a strongly curved region of space-time, like the space around huge galaxies, creating a halo.
Example of Einstein’s Cross, previously observed by the Hubble Space Telescope
Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA, Suyu et al.
The appearance of this halo depends on the gravity of the galaxy and the point of view of the observer. Here, the Earth, the lens galaxy and the quasar are aligned. An alignment making it possible to multiply the light of the quasar almost perfectly, forming what is called an Einstein ring.
The dark energy spectroscopy device, attached to the telescope (A telescope, (from the Greek tele meaning “far” and skopein meaning…) at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, discovered this lens in 2021. After its discovery, astronomers performed further analyzes with the MUSE instrument at the VLT in Chile and confirmed that they had discovered an Einstein Cross.
Astronomers have identified hundreds of Einstein’s rings. These rings magnify the light they bend, which can improve the detail astronomers can observe in galaxies far, far away.
Moreover, since the curvature of light depends on the strength of the gravitational field of the object bending it, Einstein’s rings can serve as a cosmic scale for measuring the masses of galaxies and black holes. Studying the distant light bending around these rings can even help scientists spot objects that would otherwise be too dim to see on their own, like black holes or wandering exoplanets.
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