Research: lenses of dark matter will help observe distant parts of the universe

According to a study published in the journal Science, the gravitational fields of dark matter can create

Effective lenses, they can help astronomersobserve those parts of the Universe that were previously inaccessible. An observer for whom a gravitational lens obscures the light source will observe its multiplied curved images - their shape, number, and position will be determined not only by the position of the background source relative to the lens and the observer, but also by the mass distribution in the lens itself.

Scientists led by Massimo Meneghetti,a cosmologist at the Bologna Observatory for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, estimated the number of small-scale gravitational lensing events in galaxy clusters based on observations, and then compared it with the result of computer simulations. It turned out that simulations predict a lot more of these lenses.

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If dark matter lenses are sufficient, thiswill help astronomers study the universe more fully. Lens phenomena occur when a gravitationally influencing object, perhaps a group of dark matter, aligns with a source of background light, for example, in a distant galaxy. As light passes through an object's gravitational field, it can become significantly brighter.

However, he noted that lenses tend todistort the image of background sources, which means that scientists must come up with a way to reverse-engineer the original shapes of objects from the deformed versions that the lens provides.

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