Gravitational Lensing

An Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Discovered Through the Gravitational Lensing of a Gamma-ray Burst

An intermediate mass black hole was discovered by its chance alignment with a gamma ray burst.

4 years ago

Dark Energy Survey Finds Hundreds of New Gravitational Lenses

It’s relatively rare for a magical object from fantasy stories to have a analog in real life.  A truly functional…

4 years ago

One of the Largest, Most Complete Einstein Rings Ever Seen. Astronomers Call it the “Molten Ring”

A very rare astronomical phenomenon has been in the headlines a lot recently, and for good reason.  It will be…

4 years ago

If We Used the Sun as a Gravitational Lens Telescope, This is What a Planet at Proxima Centauri Would Look Like

A recent study shows how the Sun could be used as a gravitational lens to take direct images of nearby…

4 years ago

A new way to map out dark matter is 10 times more precise than the previous-best method

Astronomers have to be extra clever to map out the invisible dark matter in the universe. Recently, a team of…

4 years ago

Something other than just gravity is contributing to the shape of dark matter halos

Galactic dark matter is in a state of maximum entropy, which means it must interact with itself.

4 years ago

Gravitational-Wave Lensing is Possible, but it’s Going to be Incredibly Difficult to Detect

Because gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, they can be lensed just as light waves are. But observing…

4 years ago

Small Amounts of Dark Matter are Creating Much Stronger Gravitational Distortions than Anyone Expected to See

Dark matter is much more clumpy than we thought, which means some dark matter might be very cold.

4 years ago

This Distorted Circle is Actually a Galaxy That Looked Very Similar to the Milky Way, Shortly After the Big Bang

Using ALMA, a European team of astronomers was able to observe a galaxy as it looked 12 billion years ago…

4 years ago

Art Installation that Demonstrates How Dark Matter Bends Light with Gravity

A new art installation at the Science Gallery Dublin, called "Dark Distortions," helps viewers to see the influence dark matter…

4 years ago