You are probably familiar with gravitational lensing, that cosmic process whereby a massive gravitational object like a galaxy, a black hole, or a group of galaxies exert a warping effect on light. Through lensing, we can see around an object. Light from a distant object bends as it passes the strong gravity, the image appears to occur on both sides of the intervening mass, like twin or even quadruplet galaxies, sometimes stretched into semicircular bands of light. The lensing also serves as a magnifier.
So, it shouldn’t surprise us that Hubble and Spitzer telescopes have been jointly used to see a lensed small galaxy as it was more than 13.3 billion years ago (give or take a week).* Thirteen point three billion years. Speak of a galaxy far, far away and long ago.
But it isn’t the discovery of this most distant object ever observed that interests me. It’s the lensing that does. Why? Because all of us undergo lensing by the people we encounter. Think of the stories you have told about people you met long ago, people whose lives are seen by those in the present through the lensing effect of your telling. How much refraction do those lives undergo by their passing by you?
And so, now, in the present, we see the stretched, amplified, parodied, and ostensibly warped lives through the lensing of others who serve as the masses that bend the light of the past and distant lives. Cosmic lensing changes the apparent shape of distant objects. Human lensing changes the character of distant and past people.
*http://www.americaspace.com/2012/11/16/hubble-and-spitzer-telescopes-combine-efforts-to-discover-most-distant-object-ever-seen/
See also https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=gravitational+lensing+pics&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F1%2F11%2FA_Horseshoe_Einstein_Ring_from_Hubble.JPG#id=0&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F1%2F11%2FA_Horseshoe_Einstein_Ring_from_Hubble.JPG&action=click
So, it shouldn’t surprise us that Hubble and Spitzer telescopes have been jointly used to see a lensed small galaxy as it was more than 13.3 billion years ago (give or take a week).* Thirteen point three billion years. Speak of a galaxy far, far away and long ago.
But it isn’t the discovery of this most distant object ever observed that interests me. It’s the lensing that does. Why? Because all of us undergo lensing by the people we encounter. Think of the stories you have told about people you met long ago, people whose lives are seen by those in the present through the lensing effect of your telling. How much refraction do those lives undergo by their passing by you?
And so, now, in the present, we see the stretched, amplified, parodied, and ostensibly warped lives through the lensing of others who serve as the masses that bend the light of the past and distant lives. Cosmic lensing changes the apparent shape of distant objects. Human lensing changes the character of distant and past people.
*http://www.americaspace.com/2012/11/16/hubble-and-spitzer-telescopes-combine-efforts-to-discover-most-distant-object-ever-seen/
See also https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=gravitational+lensing+pics&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F1%2F11%2FA_Horseshoe_Einstein_Ring_from_Hubble.JPG#id=0&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F1%2F11%2FA_Horseshoe_Einstein_Ring_from_Hubble.JPG&action=click
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