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Mahesh

12/02/25 18:43 PM IST

Scientists discover ‘Einstein ring’ around nearby galaxy

In News
  • The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space telescope has discovered a rare ring of light, known as an Einstein ring, around a galaxy nearly 590 million light-years away from Earth.
Einstein ring
  • An Einstein ring is a ring of light around a form of dark matter, galaxy or cluster of galaxies.
  • It is essentially an example of gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon which occurs when a massive celestial body — such as a galaxy or cluster of galaxies — creates a gravitational field which distorts and amplifies the light from distant galaxies that are behind it but in the same line of sight.
  • The body causing the light to curve is called a gravitational lens.
  • In the case of the recently discovered Einstein ring, NGC 6505 was the gravitational lens.
  • The nearer galaxy distorted and amplified the light coming from a distant unnamed galaxy, located 4.42 billion light-years away.
  • A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, which is 9.46 trillion kilometres.
  • Einstein rings are named after mathematician and physicist Albert Einstein, whose general theory of relativity predicted that light could bend and brighten around objects across the cosmos.
  • The first Einstein ring was discovered in 1987, and since then, several more have been discovered.
  • However, it remains unclear how many such rings exist. Notably, they are extremely rare — less than 1% of galaxies have an Einstein ring.
  • Einstein rings are not visible to the naked eye, and can be observed only through space telescopes such as Euclid.
Significance
  • These rings help scientists investigate dark matter, which has never been detected but is believed to make up 85% of the total matter in the universe.
  • This dark matter does not interact with light, but it does have a gravitational effect…
  • Gravitational lensing therefore is sensitive to the presence of this dark matter, allowing us to indirectly detect it.
  • Einstein rings enable scientists to learn about distant galaxies, which otherwise might not be visible.
  • They can also provide information about the expansion of the universe as the space between the Earth and other galaxies — both in the foreground and the background — is stretching.
Source- Indian Express

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