• Question: How does gravitational lensing affect our view of the universe?

    Asked by Cal to Daniel, Giovanna, Greg, Kelly, Lowri on 11 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Lowri Evans

      Lowri Evans answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      Hello 🙂

      It’s not my area of expertise, but the little I know on the subject is that gravitational lensing can massively change our view of distant Earth-objects. They act like magnifying glasses and can be used to study distant galaxies, which otherwise would be impossible to see.

    • Photo: Giovanna Tancredi

      Giovanna Tancredi answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      Gravitational lensing perturbs our view of the distant Universe and so it affects our physical understanding of various classes of extragalactic objects.

      One way to think of this is that this effect is very similar to what happen when we look at distant Earth-objects and scientists refer to this as atmospheric lensing. This effect is due to the fact that there are refractive index variations in the air layers just above the ground. This results in deforming our view of distant Earth-objects similarly to gravitational lensing.

    • Photo: Kelly Houton

      Kelly Houton answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      it’s not my area of expertise, sorry!
      Giovanna has given you a pretty good answer!

    • Photo: Daniel Biggs

      Daniel Biggs answered on 15 Mar 2016:

      I have not heard about this before, Giovanna has given a good answer. I am off to read some more about it. Thanks

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