Using an Artificial Intelligence system, a multidisciplinary group identified nearly 5,000 possible gravitational lenses with which it will be possible to carry out observations to the Universe distant as never before.
“This is the first massive confirmation of gravitational lensing,” explains Sebastián López, an astronomer at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Chile. “These phenomena are distortions of space-time due to the presence of dark matter,” adds the scientist.
Gravitational lenses are a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein, where an ultramassive object can bend light around it in a similar way to what happens with an optical lens, they allow to amplify the images of very distant galaxies, which would be impossible to see with other methods.
The data, captured by instruments from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope in Chile, confirmed 68 of 77 sources studied, which indicates the effectiveness of the method, with 88% certainty.
One of the main objectives of this research is that gravitational lenses would help capture dark matter, which is invisible to us. Most of the mass in the Universe is made up of dark matter, but so far it has not been possible to detect it. “We want to change that,” continues Lòpez, who is also a Doctor of Astrophysics from the University of Hamburg, Germany. “It is the dark matter that distorts space, so by measuring the deflected light, the mass that should cause this curvature can be determined.”
Due to the above, the detection of these objects, located in different regions and distances, is a great step to achieve it, since it will allow obtaining an enormous amount of information, especially from early galaxies.
Researchers from around the world collaborated in this study, participating in the ASTRO 3D Galaxy Evolution with Lenses (AGEL) study, which includes the University of Chile, along with scientists from the University of New South Wales, the Swinburne University of Technology , the Australian National University, Curtin University and the University of Queensland in Australia, the University of California, Davis, in the United States, the University of Portsmouth, in the United Kingdom.
The article was published by the Astronomical Journal under the title “The AGEL Survey: Spectroscopic Confirmation of Strong Gravitational Lenses in the DES and DECaLS Fields Selected Using Convolutional Neural Networks” DES and DECaLS selected by convolutional neural networks”). To see the published research, click on the following link.
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