Scientists Discovered Record-Breaking Gravitational Lens
Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found a unique gravitational lens that warps space-time six times. The discovery could help us better understand dark matter and dark energy, and bring us closer to solving some of the most difficult questions in cosmology.
In the Hubble photograph of the “carousel lens,” as scientists have dubbed it, you can see the central lens formed by the closest cluster of galaxies to Earth, designated L (there are four of them). They are 5 billion light years away. Beyond this cluster, in an almost perfect line of sight from Earth, are seven galaxies in five groups at a depth of up to 12 billion light years. Each of them has several copies, multiplied due to the distortion of space-time along the path of light (they are designated by letters with serial numbers). The almost perfect line passing through all seven galaxies and the cluster in the foreground appears as concentric circles in the image, along which duplicate galaxies are smeared, each along its own circle. This is no longer a lens, but an entire gravitational lens.
The researchers are confident that this unprecedented discovery opens up new horizons in space exploration. The computer model created to search for such gravitational lenses will help to more accurately measure the properties of dark matter and dark energy, which brings science closer to solving many of the mysteries of the Universe.
