Believe it or not , that blue shoe - regulate construction around that smart star is an intact wandflower , although it does n’t really look anything like that . Its incredible perverted shape is a mirage create by a strange phenomenon call off gravitative lensing .
ignitor is n’t immune to the force of gravity , and if it do into contact with a orotund enough object – such as the merge mass of a prominent galaxy – it can become radically strain . That ’s what has go on here . The light coming from the galaxy in this image had to pass through another , much closer galaxy on its way to Earth . That lighting was twisted out of its original position , and the ending resultant role is that we see something radically different from the original image .
This is sleep with as gravitational lensing , but the effect on exhibit here is peculiarly unusual . Most of the clip , lensing will simply airt the light from the original beginning so that we see a pair of mirror images . But if the alliance of the gravitational crystalline lens is absolutely staring , it will twist the twinkle into a shoe shape like the one we see here .
This was all predicted in considerable detail seventy years ago by Albert Einstein – making this roughly the thirtieth most impressive affair he ever did that is still completely beyond most people ’s inclusion . Today , construction like this are called Einstein Rings in his honour . They also serve an of import function in New astrophysics , as the extent of lensing can help us fix the full hoi polloi – and thus the amount of sorry matter – in the foreground galax that created the lens issue in the first place .
ViaNASA .
AstronomyNASAScienceSpace
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