Dupont Essay Challenge Entry

2/5/2014

Together, we can be innovative everywhere

Today, I typed a small 733 word essay on the topic of Gravitational Lensing, It was for the DuPont Essay Challenge, and the challenge I chose was "Together, we can be innovative everywhere". So, I typed up a a essay based on my current knowledge of gravitational lensing and dark matter. If there is any wrong or mislead information, please let me know!

                December, 1995. The Hubble Space telescope peers deep into the constellation Ursa Major for 10 consecutive days. The area was blank to human eyes, and when the Hubble Space Telescope took the exposure with its wide field and planetary camera 2, over 3,000 galaxies were discovered in the image. Since then, Hubble has been able to look deeper into space. In 2003, the Hubble Space Telescope completed the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image. The exposure looked even deeper into the universe, revealing early distant galaxies that looked at galaxies as young as 400 million years old. Astronomers continue to try and look deeper into the universe. In 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope will be launched and it will be capable to look deeper than ever before. But before the telescope is sent up into space, there is one more way to look even deeper into space and it is called gravitational lensing.

                According to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, light bends when it passes by a body of mass. This is proven by the bending of light from distant galaxies behind galaxy clusters. The light emitted from the galaxies are not only warped, but they are magnified through the process of gravitational lensing. Astronomers have been able to tell that some of the distant galaxies are 300 million years old, which sets a new bar for the farthest ever peered into the universe. The Hubble Telescope uses the wide field camera 3 and the advanced camera for surveys to look deep into space to observe galaxy clusters such as Abell 2744, or the Pandora Cluster. However, the beginning of the research of cluster lensing was the CLASH Initiative. CLASH stands for Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble. The program observed 25 massive galaxy clusters with HST’s new panchromatic imaging capabilities. The goals of the project is to map the distribution of dark matter in galaxy clusters using strong and weak gravitational lensing. Dark matter is non-baryonic matter that is currently unknown to science. However, we can learn more about dark matter through the learning how its gravity effects light through either weak or strong gravitational lensing. The CLASH initiative also detected and characterized some of the most distant galaxies yet discovered at z> 7 (when the Universe was younger than 800 million years old). Also CLASH studied the internal structure and evolution of the galaxies in and behind these clusters. CLASH was so successful that it planted the seed for the Hubble Frontier Field program. The Hubble Frontier Field program continued on with CLASH’s work as its basis. The HFF initiative’s goal was to undertake a revolutionary deep field observing program to peer deeper into the Universe than ever before and provide a first glimpse of the James Webb Space Telescope. The HFF observed dozens of massive galaxy clusters and selected candidates based on their lensing properties. Such properties are that the clusters are known to be massive and highly efficient lenses, the clusters have several sets of known multiple image systems confirmed with spectroscopic redshifts, and most of the clusters have high-quality magnification. Images produced from the HFF will improve understanding of galaxies during the epoch of reionization and provide unprecedented measurements of the dark matter within massive clusters. This is innovative because this will help us understand how the first galaxies looked like, helping us solve the mysterious puzzle of how galaxies formed and evolved after the big bang. Not only does this help us understand what the earliest galaxies looked like, but it will help us understand and make a step towards understanding Dark Matter. Who knows? Maybe learning how clusters bend light will crack the code of dark matter? If we do continue to study and research gravitational lensing, we will open a door to learning more about the early universe.

                Since 1995, humanity has been looking deeper into the universe. Astronomers have discovered that using gravitational lensing, we can discover galaxies as young as 300 million years old, younger than any other galaxies we have discovered. Also, using the lensing from clusters, astronomers can truly understand and learn more about dark matter and its distribution throughout the universe. This innovation will shape the course of astronomy in the future along with the James Web Space Telescope, which will peer even deeper into the universe, helping astronomers learn more about the early universe.