Reality Crowd

“During the youthful period of mankind’s spiritual evolution, human fantasy created gods in man’s own image who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate influence, the phenomenal world… The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old conception of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes… In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vase power in the hands of priests.”

Albert Einstein, reported in Science, Philosophy and Religion: A Symposium

This historic image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows a very unique looking galaxy. These concentric rings that seem artificially imposed or smeared by mistake are actually a real distortion caused by an effect called gravitational lensing. The gravity of massive objects, such as clusters of galaxies, bend space in such a way that huge lenses are created--just as if a 10,000 light-year-wide magnifying glass were just sitting in space. Depending on the distribution of matter creating a gravitational lens, there are varied types of distortions possible. Multiple images and warping are common effects.

The specific distortion captured in the above picture is called an “Einstein ring.” Predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity , this ring is created by the gravitational forces of two other galaxies directly behind the foreground galaxy in our line of sight--an amazing stroke of luck.

Scientists can use this phenomenon to to draw accurate conclusions about the mass of the galaxies and the amount of dark matter they contain. According to the article:

A sample of several dozen double rings such as this one would offer a purely independent measure of the curvature of space by gravity. This would help in determining what the majority of the Universe is made of, and the properties of dark energy.

Read the entire article here.

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