by Matt
victor
+ TAmara
When I look at everyday objects, light travels from
them to my eye in a straight line.
ice
l, you'll not
o
o
p
a
in
e
n
o
me
looked at so
position. This
l
a
e
r
s
it
m
But if you've
o
d fr
hes
ooks displace
l
e
g
a
im
the pool reac
e
f
h
o
t
m
o
t
t
that
o
b
e
light from th
s
a
e
s
u
a
path is bent.
c
e
s
b
it
,
is
r
e
t
a
w
of the
the surface
from there it travels to your
eye in a straight line. Since
our brains are used to thinking
of light traveling in a
straight path all the time, we
interpret the image in the pool
as being somewhere else - thus
the distortion.
this stainless steel
sculpture shows how
the landscape is bent
and distorted by the
three dimensional curves
of the sculpture
The gravitational field of a
massive object such as a
galaxy can bend the path of
anything moving through
space. The more massive the
object, the more the path is
bent.
Since light
travels so
fast, it must
encounter a
very strong
gravitational
field to have
a noticeable
effect on its
path.
Examples of
such objects
that would
bend the
path of light
would be
stars,
galaxies, or
black holes.
Just as glass can affect
the path of light, so can
the gravitational pull from
objects such as black
holes, galaxies, or even our
own sun. This is called
gravitational lensing.
CONVERGING PRISM
DIVERGING PRISM
A SET OF PRISMS ACTING AS A CONVERGING or DIVERGING LENS. The
path of light converges or diverges depending on the shape of
the prism.
<--P
ERC
EIVE
D
IMA
GE
Chandra
observatory
MAGE
EIVED I
<--PERC
A galaxy can focus light
just like a lens. Here the
path of light of the
galaxy I'm pointing at is
bent by the large galaxy’s
gravitational field. As a
result, We see multiple
images of the single
galaxy.
In this image you can see that
the galaxies surrounding this
cluster of galaxies are
distorted and compressed by
gravitational lensing.
Because all massive objects can
bend light, we can use gravitational
lensing to locate matter that we
cannot otherwise see, such as black
holes and dark matter.
written and enacted by cosmology workshop group 4 - Matt,
victor and tamara
Comic by Nocera 2007