Microlensing
If you liked it, then you shoulda put an Einstein ring on it
According to Einstein’s general relativity theory, gravity is a distortion of space. Rather than a force that controls an object’s pushes and pulls, the force of gravity is a by-product of the object itself. The more mass an object has, the more it distorts space.
Along with its definition of gravity, general relativity theory also predicted the astronomical phenomenon known as “microlensing.”
Microlensing involves an interaction between a star and a second space object. When an object passes by a star, both objects are bending their surrounding fabric space-time. In turn, the distortions in space allow an object’s gravity to bend light emissions from nearby stars.
These objects act as cosmic lenses, exaggerating space between objects and brightening the starlight.
On Earth, when a star is directly behind another star, light rays illuminate the interceding star from all sides, creating an “Einstein ring.”
At the ring’s peak brightness, observational telescopes are incapable of distinguishing between the light from the two stars. Instead, the starlight is perceived as a single “Einstein disk.” The warped starlight can brighten the interceding star up to 1000 times its original radiance. These…
