Source: A 10 billion-year-old supernova will soon replay before our eyes, new dark matter study predicts | Live Science . . . "Whenever some light passes near a very massive object, like a galaxy or galaxy cluster, the warping of space-time that Einstein's theory of general relativity tells us is present for any mass, delays the travel of light around that mass," lead study author Steve Rodney, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, said in a statement. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing. The effect occurs when a gravitationally massive object warps or lenses the light of distant stars and galaxies behind it — sometimes magnifying the light of distant objects, and sometimes distorting it. In the case of Supernova Requiem, the large galaxy cluster MACS J0138 is causing the stellar explosion's light to brighten, multiply and split into several different images, seemingly appearing at different points in the sky at different times, the researchers said. The first time astronomers spotted Requiem in a 2016 Hubble image of the MACS galaxy cluster, the supernova appeared simultaneously in three different spots around the galaxy cluster's edge. The three different images varied in brightness and color, suggesting they showed three different phases of the supernova as it dimmed and cooled over time, the researchers said.. . . Just sharing a wonder of our universe. My favorite quiz question, Define the universe and give three examples. Bob Wilson
Universe: That which resides in the gap between earlobes. Examples: Red State Blue State Ferign States.
"The researchers calculated that light traveling through the center of the cluster, where dark matter is densest, should appear in the sky over Earth in the year 2037, give or take two years." We should make darn sure that we have some good 'scopes operating in space and watching it through that time frame, with some cushion to spare.
