gravitational lensing

Astronomers linked a high-energy neutrino detected in 2021 by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to a star-forming galaxy named Shadow Blaster, 11 billion light-years away. The study, led by Yuji Urata of MITOS Science Co. Ltd., suggests Shadow Blaster's dense, dust-filled star-forming environment may produce high-energy neutrinos, marking the first direct connection between such a galaxy and a neutrino event.

The James Webb Space Telescope discovered a 'little red dot' in the early Universe, confirmed as a supermassive black hole with minimal surrounding galaxy. Gravitational lensing magnified Abell 2744−QSO1, revealing it as it appeared 700 million years after the Big Bang.

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered the LAP1-B galaxy, located 13 billion light years away, which appears to be one of the most primitive galaxies ever observed. The galaxy contains barely any heavy elements, supporting cosmologists' theory that heavier atoms were created in the explosive deaths of early massive stars. This discovery provides insight into how the universe began forging the complex chemical elements that eventually made up everything, including humans.

LAP1-B is an ultra-faint galaxy that formed in the reionization era and is strongly magnified by gravitational lensing. It is chemically primitive and hosts very few stars in a dominant dark matter halo. The discovery was published in Nature on May 13, 2026.

The Euclid Space Telescope's images display gravitational lenses, where foreground objects bend light from distant features into arcs or Einstein rings. Scientists are seeking public help to identify spacetime warps in these images.

A rare superluminous supernova named 'SN Winny,' located 10 billion light-years away, appears five times in the sky due to gravitational lensing. Scientists are using the time delays between its appearances to directly measure the universe's expansion rate, potentially solving a major astronomical mystery.