Abstract
Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was first tested in 1919 when two English teams demonstrated that the rays of light from stars close to the Sun were no longer straight but were deflected as a result of gravitational attraction by the Sun. Now consider a cluster of galaxies. Such clusters contain a great deal of matter, most of which is dark and invisible, as Zwicky had already proposed in the 1930s. Suppose that there is a galaxy far behind the cluster, and that it is, by chance, on the continuation of the line of sight from us to the cluster. Light rays from the distant galaxy are bent by the cluster and purely by chance some rays of light now reach us, rays that we would have missed if the cluster had not been there. As a result, we receive more light from the galaxy; the light has been magnified. The image of the galaxy, though, will generally be distorted because the lens has an irregular shape. We may even see two different images of the same object. All this is the explanation and the justification for calling the cluster a ‘gravitational lens’.
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Notes
- 1.
The mass of one particle is expressed as a measurement of energy: E = mc2.
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Habing, H.J. (2018). 1975–1984: Galaxies and the Universe. In: The Birth of Modern Astronomy. Historical & Cultural Astronomy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99082-8_8
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