Researchers may have solved the mystery of why a distant galaxy surrounded by an unusually perfect “Einstein ring” is denser than it should be: The giant galaxy has been discovered by scientists. James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is being compressed by a huge halo of dark matter.
Einstein ring, first developed by albert einsteinof relativity, are luminous halos produced by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, which occurs when light from a distant object is twisted around a “foreground object” that is directly between the distant object and the observer Phenomenon.The light appears to be bent gravity.But in fact, light travels in straight lines time and space It has been distorted by the huge mass of the foreground object.
September 2023, Astronomers discover Einstein’s ring, named JWST-ER1 in the data collected by JWST. The luminous structure has two parts: JWST-ER1r, which is the actual luminous ring made of light from the distant galaxy; and JWST-ER1g, which is the foreground object that lenses the light from the distant galaxy.
JWST-ER1r is about 21 billion light-years away from Earth, making it the most distant gravitational lensing object ever discovered; after adjusting for the expansion rate of the universe, researchers estimate that the galaxy was born about 10.3 billion years ago, during the expansion of the universe About 3.4 billion years later. big Bang.
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At the time of this discovery, the researchers noticed that the lens object JWST-ER1g had an unusually high density. The size and shape of the rings surrounding this galaxy indicate that it has a mass of about 650 billion suns, which is very high for a galaxy of its size.A large part of this mass is probably dark matter —A mysterious form of matter that does not interact with light, but Makes up approximately 85% of all matter in the universe. But even taking this mysterious material into account, the galaxy still appears to be too large for its size.
“Extra mass is needed to explain the lensing effect,” researchers wrote in the paper then. However, they did not explain what this “extra quality” might be.
But in a new study published on April 11 Astrophysical Journal Communicationsa new group of researchers has proposed an explanation for the unusual density of JWST-ER1g: as regular matter collapsed into it, the halo of dark matter surrounding the galaxy was compressed into an ever-tighter space, causing the mysterious matter to become even denser. high.
“Our numerical study shows that this mechanism can explain the high dark matter density of JWST-ER1g,” said lead author of the study Kong DemaoResearchers from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) said in the report statement.
This is not the first true Einstein ring discovered by JWST. In September 2022, a Reddit user used data from the telescope Shows a perfect circular halo It is approximately 12 billion light years away from Earth. JWST also uses gravity lensing Photographing the most distant stars ever and Some of the oldest galaxies in the universe.
The researchers hope the telescope will help identify more Einstein rings to further test their theory.
“JWST gives us an unprecedented opportunity to observe ancient galaxies that formed when the universe was young,” said study co-authors. Yu HaiboUC Riverside professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy said in a statement. “We expect to see more surprises from JWST soon and learn more about dark matter.”
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