Every once in a while, one wonders if we really seeing what we think
we are seeing. One yearns for surety in a single fact out there.
That blue arc is associated with the apparent super cluster and is
surely integral to that super cluster and is not likely back lit at
all. We need to think a little more deeply on just what we may be
observing here. Otherwise you are asking for a stunning coincidence
whose probability appears to require the age of the universe and much
more.
It is plausible that the super cluster is significant enough that the
internal metric is dominant as compared to the metric of our universe
and this produces an effective aura.
The arc may actually be successfully thought of as the aura of the
gravitational lens itself.
Astronomers
Discover Galaxy They Thought Couldn’t Exist
By Adam Mann
June 26, 2012
Astronomers have
spotted one of the rarest and most extreme galaxy clusters in the
universe and, behind it, an object that shouldn’t exist.
Galaxy clusters are
collections of galaxies that orbit one another and are the most
massive objects in the universe. The newly discovered cluster, first
detected by the Hubble space telescope, is over 500 trillion times
the mass of the sun. It is located approximately 10 billion
light-years away. Because looking out into the distant cosmos means
also looking back in time, the cluster formed during an era when the
universe was a quarter its present age.
The cluster, named
IDCS J1426.5+3508, is extreme because during this period in cosmic
history, massive collections of galaxies were just beginning to form.
Only one other cluster of comparable size has been seen at this
distance and it is a lightweight compared to IDCS J1426.5+3508.
Adding to the object’s
strangeness, a mysterious arc of blue light was seen just behind
the galaxy cluster. Astronomers think this indicates another massive
star-forming galaxy located even further away at an even earlier
epoch.
Light from this
more distant — and yet unnamed – galaxy has been highly distorted
by an effect known as gravitational lensing. The gargantuan mass of
the galaxy cluster bends and twists light coming from the distant
galaxy, creating the strange blue arc.
The farther galaxy is estimated to be 10 to 13 billion light-years
away and have a mass approximately 70 trillion times the sun.
The astronomers who
spotted the blue arc calculated that the odds of finding such a
massive galaxy so distant in the universe are practically nil: “For
the observed magnitudes we expect to find no arcs over the
entire sky as bright,” the team writes in one of three papers
outlining their findings, published online in The Astrophysical
Journal June 26.
Understanding how
these objects came to be could help astronomers determine the history
of galactic evolution throughout the history of the universe. The
team hopes that the eROSITA mission – an x-ray telescope
scheduled to launch next year and study galaxy clusters and dark
matter – will provide more information on this bizarre finding.
1 comment:
hmmm... who wrote this? It's lens effect as predicted by Einstein. Classic case, no mystery... bending light... from dark matter. see viewzone.com/darkmatter.html for explanation or google lens effect.
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