Berkeley, CA — Weak gravitational lensing is a uniquely promising way to learn how much dark matter there is in the Universe and how its distribution has evolved since the distant past. New work by a ...

In an extraordinary testament to the predictive power of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a star system has been discovered that demonstrates extreme gravitational lensing. This observation ...

Maunakea, Hawai’i – Astronomers have captured a bizarre image of a supernova, the powerful explosion of a star, whose light was so warped by the gravity of a galaxy that it appears as multiple images ...

A newly discovered cluster-scale strong gravitational lens, with a rare alignment of seven background lensed galaxies, provides a unique opportunity to study cosmology. In a rare and extraordinary ...

NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, funded by the US National Science Foundation and US Department of Energy's Office of Science, will add an unprecedented amount of cosmological data to the study of ...

Dark matter keeps getting blamed for the universe’s big patterns while staying stubbornly out of reach. You cannot see it, touch it, or capture it. Yet its gravity helps shape galaxies, and that makes ...

Astronomy is, in essence, an exercise in inference. We cannot touch the stars, nor scoop up galaxies in a lab. Instead, we decipher the universe through its light — its color, intensity, rhythm and ...

Composite image of the gravitational lens SDP.81 showing the distorted ALMA image of the more distant galaxy (red arcs) and the Hubble optical image of the nearby lensing galaxy (blue center object).

(Nanowerk News) In a rare and extraordinary discovery, researchers have identified a unique configuration of galaxies that form the most exquisitely aligned gravitational lens found to date. The ...