Einstein’s ring

Imagine we have a elastic sheet, that represents space-time, like a trampoline. You put there an object with big mass, like a bowling ball.

The trampoline will bend and if you put an object with smaller mass, like a ping ping ball close to it, the small object will go towards the object with the higher mass.

The heavier object bent space-time and attracted the object with smaller mass to it.

This is how gravity works! In real life, things with big mass like massive stars, galaxy clusters or black holes bend space time and even light.

Let’s say you are on planet and you have in front of you a black hole and beyond the black hole there is a star, that you can’t see due to the black hole. (Let’s assume that black holes can’t absorb light)

If the black hole occures your vision, than the light from the star doesn’t reach you. Or this is what you think the way it happens. In fact, the black hole has a lot of mass and is very dense, and that way, the light from the star will bend around the black hole, so you can see it!

Massive celestial bodies actually bend the image of all objects that are standing somewhere behind them creating a ring-shaped distortion of the image.

This distortion from massive objects in space is named by the discoverer of the so called “Einstein Ring”, which are relative to the general theory of relativity.

See these photos below:

The Einstein Ring is a phenomena that is happening to all objects with mass in space, but it is so small that it cannot be observed. So Earth or the moon bend light, but not so much as objects with a lot of mass such as stars or galaxies.

The second photo we showed to You was taken by the Hubble Telescope.

The Einstein ring is a mysterious phenomena, which we wouldn’t have been understanding without Einstein!