The latest image from NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope is also a stunning illustration of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. So much so that the cosmic phenomenon has been called an “Einstein ring”.
Einstein rings occur when light from one distant object bends around the mass of another, slightly closer and even larger object. Usually, the effect is too subtle to observe up close at the local level, “but sometimes it becomes clearly visible when dealing with light bending on a huge, astronomical scale,” NASA writes. In the case of this image, light from one distant galaxy is bent around the mass of another.
This “gravitational lensing,” as it is technically called, is Einstein’s general theory of relativity in practice. Space-time (the merging of space and time that make up the fabric of the universe) curves around the mass of an object, and the curve itself is gravity. Objects like the one in the photo – an elliptical galaxy wrapped in a spiral galaxy – are “the perfect laboratory in which to study galaxies too faint and distant to be seen otherwise.”
This Einstein ring was captured by the study “Strong Lensing and Cluster Evolution (SLICE)” conducted at the University of Liège in Belgium. The study is being led by a group of astronomers who are seeking to “trace eight billion years of galaxy cluster evolution,” according to NASA.
