Slashdot Mirror
Near-Perfect Einstein Ring Discovered
Fraser Cain writes "Universe Today is reporting on the discovery of a nearly perfect Einstein Ring; a gravitational lens of a nearby galaxy working as a natural telescope to focus the light from a more distant galaxy. Gravitational lenses have been seen many times before, but never so complete, with a close lensing galaxy and a distant magnified galaxy."
Well, this is a nice discovery to celebrate the 100 years of the Einstein's miraculous year and 50 years since the guy passed away.
See, now they have a really good reason to get up there and maintain Hubble. I mean seriously, what better reason than to focus hubble on that Einstein ring and get a very upclose view of a distant galaxy
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
Havaing a look at Einstein's other interests is a worthwhile exercise too.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It can't be long now that we noticed the lens of the Vorgon sighting device. Are you sure those are galaxies on the other side, and not the twinkling of a charging energy device of a demolition crew?
If we can see that universe better, the opposite is true, they can see us better.
That being said, I want to be the first to welcome our new voyeuristic overlords.
The paper.
You mean Vogons, don't you?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
It can't be long now that we noticed the lens of the Vorgon sighting device. Are you sure those are galaxies on the other side, and not the twinkling of a charging energy device of a demolition crew?
What's a Vorgon?
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Surely you realize what a showstopper this is, should I ever want to get married?
"If we can see that universe better, the opposite is true, they can see us better."
Well humans being the rascals they are, will simply moon them.
What's a Vorgon
When you have five apple and you eat all but one, you have Vorgon.
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
Einstein? Who's that? Don't you mean Stephen Hawking?
You know, the guy that discovered black holes...
I think the heart of gold is somewhere around here, thats much to improbobalbe that we would find something like this...
Today in science, experts focus on Einstein's gigantic ring to see what they can find.
Scientists report their need to explore the depth of the dark matter in Einstein's ring sometimes called Einstein's black hole.
"In the interests of space science, we need to plunge into the ring and extract the hidden dark matter" said one scientist from NASA's space laboratory.
"Soon we anticipate manned explorations inside the ring that will explain the enormous amounts of strange gas and dark matter inside. We are very excited about this" concluded NASA officials.
With all the miraculous things he did for the world in the realm of science, one wonders what we'd have if he'd devoted his mind to politics, or computers.
Recently a tiny blackhole was discovered near ./ server room. It causes most of astronomically related comments to vanish into another dimention.
As a proof, I show you 34 comments in about 90 minutes. There's simply no other reasonable explanation for this phenomenon, but I'm currently using a galaxy telescope to conduct further investigation.
...But the joke includes Einstein's ring and Uranus.
The Vogon have an Earth accessible website with a small excerpt from of one of their poems. It's at goatse.cx.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
eye of Thundara, give me sight beyond sight.............
and they'd still fit on a 8.5"x11" sheet of paper
Oops, ignore previous comment for being utter rubbish. Sorry...
It's seven billion lightyears away! The article specifically notes that the great distance makes it even more special.
And because it's so far away, while still in focus, we can look back further than ever before. It'll be interesting to see some theories about the early universe shattered to pieces.
instead it will be known as urectum
Word.
..... /. editors...
I'm looking at the title and i KNOW einstien did not discover any sort of ring thing....
how about 'Near perfect gravitational Lensing observed"
or
"Gravitational lensing futher supported by exceptional evidence."
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
It's like having our own super-weapon -- we can shine our sun through it and fry their planets.
FTFA:
According to the paper, the ring inscribes a "C-shaped" circle of 270 degrees in near-complete circumference with an apparent radius of slightly more than 1 3/4 arc seconds - roughly the size of a star's "virtual" image seen at high power through a small amateur telescope.
So would this thing be visible with a small amateur telescope, or is it too dim? Does it even emit in the visible spectrum?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Just because Einstein was good at math and physics doesn't mean that he would have been good at politics or some other career field.
Crap, now I have to show the picture on the site to someone else, otherwise I'll be visited by Einstein's ghost.
The summary states incorrectly:
Way back in 1989, radio astronomers found a gravitational lens near the galaxy MG1643+1346 which creates two images, one of which is a nearly complete circular ring. Take a look at this radio image from Langston et al., AJ 97, 1283 (1989):
Click to see radio image of lensed quasar.
So, this newest system is a pretty good lens, but not the "most complete" one yet found.
By the way, if you want to understand how gravitational lensing works, you can read some lectures I wrote for an introductory astronomy class:
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
Bruce
http://bruceneufeld.com/
Today is a good day to code.
It was a Vorgon conclusion that you didn't know what Vorgon meant...
The article talks about dark matter and energy in the same breath as lensing, computer sifting, etc., I don't know if what they are saying can actually then be correct. Especially in light of the fact that we have no clue about dark matter or energy! Anyway, here is an interesting link about the electric universe which I feel is much more compelling.. http://www.rense.com/general64/glow.htm -jimijon
Mind | Body | Spirit | Cash
Urectum? That must be an area with lots of dark matter inside.
I thought inflation preceeded all star formation, so how can the source be a pre inflationary epoch galaxy ?
Seems the mods don't know the meaning of the word "Redundant".
Just because Einstein was good at math and physics doesn't mean that he would have been good at politics or some other career field.
That's probably why he turned down the presidency of Israel. What he DID recognize was that scientists had a responsibility as citizens to be involved in politics, even if it was at the advisory/cautionary level which he himself chose as a pacifist advocate. Smart guy, that Einstein.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Well that seems to be relatively obvious and maybe insignificant compared to what can be done just by improving the receiving setup.
So I thought, if we increase our telescope resolution to the point where we can get a very high resolution image of the 11 bn ly galaxy, and find a perfect Einstein ring in that, might it not be then possible to find an even farther (say 20 bn ly galaxy) that might by fabulous luck be lined up with it, and thereby (luck again) piggy back all the way up to the end of visible space?
So question 1) If we had a 1 AU wide telescope and enough Einstein rings, just how far do you think we could really see?
This sounds similar to the idea of pointing a big telescope at the edge of a black hole to view the entire universe (since light can orbit many times before leaving, at least according to a neat story called the Planck Dive). So 2) assuming the black holes or something close enough to them really exist in our galaxy, what could such a large telescope reveal by focusing on the edge of such a black hole, and 3) is there any way possible to use one possibly in conjunction with piggy backed Einstein rings to see light beyond what is the "visible universe" i.e. the point at which expanding space has expanded beyond our light cone.
It would seem that an image that had been captured by a black hole before much expansion had occurred could conceivably be accessible now (if black holes truly can be "read" that way not just in fiction) even though the space being imaged has long expanded far beyond the edge of the visible universe. IANA astronomer but interested in where fact and fiction separate and neat ways to use computer graphic techniques and telescopes. Can anybody experienced answer some of these questions?
They sure did ... they power supply ran off of coffee, food, and oxygen, and they required at least 8 hours of downtime a day for them to function properly [and to prevent overheating]. The results they produced were displayed on dead tree paste that was flattened and gathered together in groups.
And then mathematicians and physicists would use the results of these computations instead of wasting time computing things like the square root of 3021377 by hand.
Was that from the Redneck Dictionary?
Nope - all of my own creation ^^
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
Would this ring, or others like it, work in two directions? i.e. diverging electromagnetic radiation sourcing from here across the space we see 'through' the lens?
Just curious.
Uh, if you're referring to the Vogons from H2G2, see previous spelling.
Goten Xiao
my wife has been bugging me to buy her one of these for years...
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
Do your stuff. In fact, if you look at the time stamp, the last line was before the story that mentions about hubble.
Thank you for not making that link clickable. I am eating my lunch.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
I hope it's not god doing the goatse pose.
but with no A-bomb we'd still be fighting it...
I strongly suspect that's bullshit Americans tell themselves to feel better about having killed so many civilians.
My Precious ...
The James Webb telescope is not even on the drawing board yet and will not work in visual wavelengths so any spare HST hardware would only be useful if it were designed for IR. What space telescope are you going to launch by 2008 when the HST will fail? The JWST isn't going up until around 2015 (originally expected to launch in 2011 but now very unlikely). Do we want to go 3-7 years without a good space telescope? I know of no other plans for a telescope to go up using those HST parts. By the time you design one, build it and launch it I'm not sure it will have been worth it. Expensive or not, fixing the HST with astronauts and the space shuttle is the fastest (and probably the only real) solution to keeping a space telescope working continuously in the near future.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
Because of Einstein's insight into the conversion of mass and energy, we now understand how distant Sun's illuminate the cosmos
Is this a print publication? Because the editor must be an illiterate moron..
Also, the capitalized 'Sun' refers to the star at the center of our solar system. Stars in general may be referred to as 'suns'.
"Einstein's lens" is caused by the fact that gravity attracts light.
:
:
You can use Google to calculate how much weight each photon has.
First, we start by deciding the frequency of the light. Let's say it's red light:
500 THz
Next, we compute the energy of each photon by using the equation E=hf
h * 500 THz
Next, we compute the mass of each photon by using the equation m=E/c^2
h * 500 THz / (c^2)
Finally, we compute the weight of the photon (on the Earth's surface) by using the equation F=mg, where g is 9.8 N/kg:
h * 500 THz / (c^2) * (9.8 N/kg)
Typing this into Google, we find that each photon of red light weighs 3.6*10^-35 N.
For comparison, an electron weighs
(9*10^-31 kg) * (9.8 N/kg) = 8.8*10^-30 N.
"Something a lot less worthwhile?"
Politics: Founding Fathers.
Computers: keep your comment in mind when next time you wonder why no one's going into CS. Besides, were's all that "love" you all profess to have?
So the parent post is not offtopic, but the reply to the parent is? Makes not sense. Not to mention the fact that the post IS on topic. Someone's abusing the mod system. Offtopic is supposed to handle posts that are genuinely of a different topics.
Can we use this ring lens to search for a rotating black hole, through which to study the future history of the universe?
--
make install -not war
Got a good extended belly laugh. Thanks...
I strongly suspect that's bullshit Americans tell themselves to feel better about having killed so many civilians.
By "Americans", you mean...?
First of all, as an American, I don't think at all we'd still be fighting WWII. I doubt very many people at all hold that opinion. More likely, the US would have wiped out a larger portion of the Japanese population and lost far more of their own soldiers as well.
Secondly, how am I, born in the US far after the fact, responsible for killing anyone? Because, by sheer chance, I was born in this country? Or because I didn't leave in disgust as soon as I learned of it? What country do you live in that has never killed any civilians in its entire history?
Weight, which is a Newtonian concept, is not really applicable to an inherently relativistic particle such as the photon. In addition, the effect of gravity on a photon is actually about twice as large as you would expect from Newtonian gravitation. This comes from the weak-field limit of general relativity, and was one of the first tests of the theory. In 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington observed the bending of starlight around the sun during a solar eclipse, and showed that the bending was, lo and behold, about twice as large as the Newtonian prediction, and consistent with general relativity.
> If we can see that universe better, the opposite is true, they can see us better.
Don't be ridiculous. Something you are looking at through a telescope cannot look back at you. The something looks BIG. The you looks SMALL.
BIG.
SMALL.
BIG.
SMALL.
Alright children.
I strongly suspect that's bullshit Americans tell themselves to feel better about having killed so many civilians.
You'd suspect wrong.
Us Americans don't feel bad about having whiped out Nagasaki or Hiroshima with a single bomb. After all, it was just a quicker way of the same thing we did to Tokyo and Berlin.
But if the USA didn't have the Manhattan project, or if we didn't think the Germans had one, we might not have had such fierce opposition to them. We may have sued for peace with Germany rather than invade--and if we had done that, at the right time, there'd likely still be a cold war going on.
I thought the Voyager anomolies where caused by
uneven solar gravitational effects -- kind of like
the gravitational fluctuations found when a
satellite is used to map out varying surface
densities of a planet or a moon. Crap, maybe I
read this from the Hitchikers Guide!
I think the way most astronomers and physicists these days prefer to approach the issue is that light has no rest mass, but does carry momentum (e.g., radiation pressure, is one example). Radiation fields have an energy density, but no mass. Sure, you can calculate a mass equivalent to the energy, but what does that mean, really?
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Here are some of Einstein's other achievements:
- Was the first American to climb Mt. Everest.
- Was co-creator of the hit TV shows "The Newlywed Game" and "Escape from Gilligan's Island".
- Contributed to the success of the George Forman Grill by suggesting that the grill be tilted so that the fat will run off.
- Was the third James Bond.
- Single-handedly captured John Wilkes Booth after the latter assassinated President Neville Chamberlain.
- Helped write two of the Gospels in the Christian Bible, and provided technical assistance with some of Paul's Letters to the Thesolonians (sp?).
- Was the first human to defeat Commander Data in a game of Poker.
- Was the inspiration for "Romeo" in Larry Shakespeare's epic mini-series "Romeo and Juliet".
- Had two songs in the Top 40 at the same time for six weeks in 1971.
- Coined the term "asshole", which he first used to describe Jerry Falwell. (He also helped popularize the acronym "WTF?", although he did not coin that term.)
- Widely recognized, along with Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, as inventor of the Internet.
- Discovered fire.
These are just some of the things that Einstein managed to do before his life was tragically cut short in a freak accident involving a fishing pole, two bungee cords, and an Elvis impersonator.Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Well, he was sitting on it, and I guess no one wanted to move him in case they messed up his hair...
Forget all the jokes which are 99% of this article.
I've never heard of this focussing-galaxy before, and to me this is absolutely incredible. That there could be a huge mass of billions of stars, could bend light and act as a telescope to see even further galaxies, that's a fucking unbelievable phenomenon. And to think that most people on this site today will spend their time arguing about Star Trek or some other insignificant shit, whilst all this amazing crap is happening on such a collosal scale.
I mean, on this sort of scale, galaxies of billions of stars mbillions of times the size of the Earth, separated by vast voids, interacting in such a way. The Earth could disappear entirely and it wouldn't even register on such a scale, no more than a speck of dust matters to the Earth. Sort of puts all the shit that happens on Earth into perspective. Compared to this, a nuclear war wiping out the entire planet is completely irrelevent and unnoticeable.
That's no ring... That's a space station!
Because making fun of one of the worst science fiction movies ever made is Flamebait.
/. = gay.
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.