Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Cosmology

The dark side of distortion

Nature volume 405, pages 133–134 (2000)Cite this article

If you see your reflection in a spoon, your face will look strangely elongated because of the way the light rays are bent. Einstein predicted that gravity could also bend light, so you should in principle see similar image distortions when looking out into space. In astronomy this effect is known as gravitational lensing, and many examples have now been found of such distortions. For instance, a spherical galaxy located far behind a massive galaxy cluster tends to look elongated. So gravitational lensing offers a useful way of measuring the density and distribution of matter between distant galaxies and us, even if the matter itself cannot be seen. The more mass that is present, the larger the distortions should be.

A long-standing goal in cosmology has been the detection of lensing, not just from compact objects such as stars, galaxies or galaxy clusters, but also from the most elusive matter in the Universe. This is the ‘dark matter’ that appears to fill intergalactic space and to weigh about ten times as much as all the gas and stars combined. The gravitational effect of this dark matter has now been observed by Wittman et al.1 (reported on page 143 of this issue), and by three other groups announcing similar results2,3,4. Tony Tyson and his group at Bell Labs, of which David Wittman is a member, have been searching for gravitational lensing from large-scale structure in the Universe for 15 years. Why did it take them and the other teams so long to detect it?

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Gravitational lensing distorts space so that spherical images become elliptical.

References

  1. Wittman, D. M., Tyson, J. A., Kirkman, D., Dell'Antonio, I. & Bernstein, G. Nature 405, 143–148 (2000).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Van Waerbeke, L. et al. http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0002500; Astron. Astrophys. (in the press).

  3. Bacon, D., Refregier, A. & Ellis, R. http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0003008

  4. Kaiser, N., Wilson, G. & Luppino, G. A. http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0003338

  5. De Bernardis, P. et al. Nature 404, 955–959 (2000).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 19104, Pennsylvania, USA

    Max Tegmark

Authors
  1. Max Tegmark
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Max Tegmark.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Tegmark, M. The dark side of distortion. Nature 405, 133–134 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35012190

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35012190

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing