The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Topic started by: rangerrebew on April 21, 2017, 08:52:08 am
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A Rare Quadruple Supernova, Revealed by a Quirk of Einstein
By William Herkewitz
Apr 20, 2017
The star had been in hiding. A galaxy sat halfway between it and us, eclipsing it from the Earth's point of view. But when it went supernova last September, astronomers caught the image of the concealed explosion anyhow, all thanks to a cool trick of physics.
Because of a bizarre effect called gravitational lensing explained by Einstein's theory of general relativity, scientists caught four separate images of the supernova in a single picture. Stranger still, the faraway supernova—it lies more than 4.4 billion light years from home—was naturally magnified by 5,000 percent when the scientists first saw it.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/news/a26164/quadruple-supernova/
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@rangerrebew I just wanted to say thank you for all the articles you post here. It is appreciated.
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Why would this be 4 separate images rather than a continuous ring?
(http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/17/16/980x490/landscape-1492709812-16geu-illustration.jpg)
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Why would this be 4 separate images rather than a continuous ring?
http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/17/16/980x490/landscape-1492709812-16geu-illustration.jpg
The gravity of the intervening galaxy isn't uniform.
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Why would this be 4 separate images rather than a continuous ring?
(http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/17/16/980x490/landscape-1492709812-16geu-illustration.jpg)
Not sure how it works but if there were a ringed supernova, that'd make them have to rethink all this stuff from the beginning.
I am sure it's got something to do with how the image was taken that it would give them four different looks and magnify it too.
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The gravity of the intervening galaxy isn't uniform.
That makes sense.