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Space
Space
Science
Sharmila Kuthunur

Exotic 'Einstein ring' suggests that mysterious dark matter interacts with itself

Albert Einstein James Webb Space Telescope
In the field of one of JWST's largest-area surveys, COSMOS-Web, an Einstein ring was discovered around a compact, distant galaxy. It turns out to be the most distant gravitational lens ever discovered by a few billion light-years.

A fresh analysis of a remarkably massive yet compact galaxy from the early universe suggests that dark matter interacts with itself.

The galaxy, JWST-ER1, which formed just 3.4 billion years after the Big Bang, was first spotted last October in images snapped by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). At over 17 billion light-years from Earth, JWST-ER1g is the farthest-ever example of a perfect "Einstein ring" — an unbroken circle of light around the galaxy, a result of light rays from a distant, unseen galaxy being bent due to the space-warping mass of JWST-ER1. 

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