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Near-Perfect Einstein Ring Discovered

Posted by Zonk on from the i-seeeeee-you dept.

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."

14 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. A fitting discovery for Einstein's year by kkumer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Hmmm..... by Punboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Hmmm..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I still say instead of fixing Hubble, we spend the money on a new Hubble. Just like it just doesn't pay to fix a lot of items on Earth, the delivery charges for new parts for satellites are way too high.

    2. Re:Hmmm..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We're going to have more powerful ground based (and therefore maintainable) telescopes very soon. A more important science project to keep alive is the Voyagers. It has taken decades to get them where they are, and the deviation of their trajectories from the predicted trajectories is very valuable to get an idea of the dark matter present in our own solar system.


      The information available from tracking them, can only be obtained again after more decades of having launched a probe, and it is therefore less easily replaceable.

    3. Re:Hmmm..... by glesga_kiss · · Score: 3, Insightful
      A more important science project to keep alive is the Voyagers. It has taken decades to get them where they are, and the deviation of their trajectories from the predicted trajectories is very valuable to get an idea of the dark matter present in our own solar system.

      If that is the cause of the deviation. The dark matter thing is a wild guess there.

    4. Re:Hmmm..... by Gulthek · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I have not understood why GWB's henchman are cutting these little ones

      FUD. As poor a President that GW is, laying Voyager on his Resolute Desk isn't fair. NASA is trying to use the Voyager program as leverage to reduce their proposed budget cuts.

      Essentially GW's budget includes a NASA funding cut. NASA says that if the budget goes through as it is, then it will be forced to cut funding to maintaining Voyager and other fun science projects.

      As I see it, their hope is that those in Washington will balk at potentially losing a famous project from their generation.

  3. IF we can see them better... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. "Nearby"? by theufo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:How hard is it to type one more.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The official scientific term for gravitational lensing that produces a ring image is an "Einstein ring". The submitter/editors didn't make it up; it's right in the title of the paper.

  6. Recursive lensing dependent on our side? 3 Q's by mattr · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I was wondering if there might be a way to improve resolution of image by scanning across the lens periodically as our planet and solar system move in spacetime, similarly to the way you can get higher resolution by composing many frames of video into a single high resolution (or at least high contrast) print.

    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?

    1. Re:Recursive lensing dependent on our side? 3 Q's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      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?

      I assume you're talking about floating a set of telescopes at the stable lagrange points in Earth's orbit, aye?

      If we could do that, there's not really anything other than the cost that would prevent us from floating space telescopes in the L points of other planets in our system, too. Mars and Venus, and something further out like Jupiter would give us an extremely sensitive telescope that works a lot like the global observatory does, only on a larger scale. The problem is that they'd be a bitch to maintain, and we would need feasible interplanetary travel before we could do that. (current technology isn't anywhere near efficient or fast enough to maintain such a network, though we could probably put it together and fly it within a decade or two)

      In response to your question, though, we probably wouldn't *need* Einstein lenses to see to the beginning of the Universe. Hell, we've got telescopes on Earth that can see very bright objects at the edge of the Universe. The question is how dim an object we could pick up with such a telescope, and while I'm not an astronomer, I'd wager that such a telescope could pick up extremely dim objects at extremely great distance without the benefit of lenses. With them, who knows? We might even be able to photograph the surface of extra-solar planets if the resolution is high enough.

  7. Computers did exist in the early 1900's! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Einstein's genius by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    Something a lot less worthwhile?

  9. Re:New Hubble vs. fixing the old one by magarity · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Of course that does not solve the issue of needing to maintain the new telescope

    Actually, it goes a long way towards that goal. By discovering that parts X, Y, and Y are prone to breaking on the Hubble, those parts can be redesigned for a new model to be much more break resistant and longer lasting.