A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope looks into the lair of Cosmic Leviathan, a gigantic cluster of galaxies nine billion light-years away in the Draco galaxy.
Like the sea monster in ancient mythology, submerged and waiting to pluck unlucky sailors to their doom, this celestial beast can be seen from the waves around it. So titanic is this leviathan, however, that waves do not travel on the surface of an ocean or lake but are deformations in its fabric. space time himself.
This particular galaxy cluster, called eMACS J1823.1+7822, was one of five selected for observation by Hubble astronomers to determine the strength of this “warping” effect, which was first hypothesized. Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
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A 1915 theory, sometimes called Einstein’s Geometric Theory of Gravitation, states that bowling balls placed on a trampoline cause depression, that objects with mass cause the fabric of space-time to warp. This curvature arises The force of gravity. And the greater mass of cosmic matter, causes the distortion of space.
Light travels in straight lines throughout the universe, but when it encounters a warp caused by a truly massive object, its path is curved. While the warping object is in between land and a background object, which can bend light in a way that changes the apparent position of the background object.
But when the intermediate or “lensing object” is really massive – like a gigantic cluster GalaxiesFor example – light from a background source takes different time to reach Earth depending on how close it passes to the natural cosmic lens.
This effect is called Gravitational lensing, Einstein rings and Einstein crosses can often make the same objects appear at multiple points in the sky in stunning systems. This can make background objects appear magnified in the sky, a powerful effect astronomers use to observe distant and early faint galaxies.
The distortion caused by massive clusters like eMACS J1823.1+7822 helps astronomers study the mystery. Dark matter, which makes up about 85% of the mass in the universe but is invisible because it does not interact with electromagnetic radiation. Because dark matter interacts gravitationally, the lensing of light from a galaxy or galaxy cluster can help researchers map the distribution of dark matter.
In the new Hubble image, eMACS J1823.1+7822, made up of a collection of elliptical galaxies, acts as a gravitational lens. The cluster warps the shape of the galaxies around it, giving them a slightly elongated shape, turning some into arcs and others into bright streaks.
This particular image was created using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, both of which are capable of observing galaxies and stars in specific wavelengths of light. Observing objects at different wavelengths in this way allows for a complete picture of the structure, the researchers say.
In turn, such observations can reveal the composition and behavior of matter that is hidden only in visible light. When combined with the use of clusters such as eMACS J1823.1+7822, gravitational lensing allows some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe to do this. Powerful observatories like Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope Conditions that appear after some time can be investigated The Big Bang and the birth of the universe.
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