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Look carefully, and you'll see periods, colons, ellipses, even commas. Complex symbols are slightly more elusive, but the JWST has just spotted one in the wild. There, in space-time warped and stretched by gravity, the light of a distant galaxy is contorted into the shape of a perfect, giant cosmic question mark.JWST has spotted in deep space).
Space-time – the fabric of the Universe – isn't smooth and uniform. Massive objects cause it to stretch and warp, like putting a heavy object on a trampoline. Massive galaxies and galaxy clusters do something similar to space-time; any light traveling through that space-time does so along a stretched and curving path.multiplicationIt's quite interesting to look at, and benefits science, too.
gravitational lens. Behind a galaxy cluster called MACS-J0417.5-1154, in distant space, two galaxies have been caught interacting. This is what causes the question mark shape. Astronomers imaged the region using both JWST and Hubble, and were able to determine that the Question Mark Pair, as the two galaxies are now being called, are at the same distance away from us, both emitting light that has traveled 7.2 billion years to reach us.
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