The Hubble NASA / ESA Space Telescope captured what they describe as a “truly strange and very rare phenomenon” – the largest and one of the most complete Einstein rings ever discovered in our universe. The object GAL-CLUS-022058s – first theorized by Einstein in his general relative theory – was nicknamed by astronomers studying this Einstein ring as the “molten ring”, which alludes to its appearance in the constellation of the southern hemisphere of Fornax. ).
Einstein’s gravitational theory
The phenomenon of gravitational lenses cannot be explained without general relativity. Einstein’s gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest individual realization of theoretical physics, has led to beautiful relationships that link gravitational phenomena to the geometry of space, said great Caltech physicist Richard Feynman.
First theorized to exist by Einstein in his general relative theory, the unusual shape of this object, its geometry, Hubble relates, “can be explained by a process called the gravitational lens, which causes light that shines from afar to be bent and drawn.” gravity of an object between its source and the observer. In this case, the light from the background galaxy was distorted in the curve we see by the gravity of the group of galaxies placed in front of it. The almost exact alignment of the background galaxy with the central elliptical galaxy of the cluster, seen in the middle of this image, distorted and magnified the image of the background galaxy in an almost perfect ring. Gravity from other galaxies in the cluster causes additional distortion. “
Objects like these are the ideal laboratories to study galaxies that are often too faint and distant to see otherwise without gravitational lenses.
“Recent results from astronomers studying the occasional gravitational lenses of unknown worlds through the intervention of stars,” says Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, “suggest that orphan planets may be at least as numerous as stars. In other words, there could be hundreds of billions of orphaned worlds creeping through our galaxy. “
Daily Galaxy, Sam Cabot, through NASA
Image Credit: ESA / Hubble and NASA, S. Jha)