If you’re an astronomer looking for a sign from the universe, today is probably a bad day to go looking for it at work. In a delightful twist of cosmic irony, the universe seems to have thrown a question back at us – quite literally. The
James Webb Space Telescope has snapped a pair of galaxies that have somehow warped themselves into the shape of a giant celestial question mark.
While this might sound like something straight out of a
Resident Alien side-arc, the event is actually a mind-bending display of
gravitational lensing — a phenomenon where the gravity of a massive object distorts and magnifies the light of objects behind it. In this case, a
galaxy cluster dubbed MACS-J0417.5-1154 bended light from two distant galaxies into what resembles a colossal, interstellar query mark. As if the universe itself was asking, “You’ve got questions? Well, so do I.”
Gravitational lensing is a rare, albeit known, cosmic phenomenon, and this particular formation — a "hyperbolic umbilic gravitational lens" — is especially unique. According to astronomer Guillaume Desprez, there are only three or four other instances of such formations in the observable universe. In other words, it’s like stumbling upon a cosmic four-leaf clover.
But if you’re asking why should we care that the universe decided to doodle a question mark 7 billion light-years away, this cosmic quirk actually helps glimpse into the universe’s teenage years.
"These galaxies, seen billions of years ago when star formation was at its peak, are similar to the mass that the
Milky Way galaxy would have been at that time," explains another astronomer Marcin Sawicki. "Webb is allowing us to study what the teenage years of our own galaxy would have been like."
So, what’s the next question the cosmos will throw our way? With the
JWST’s inquisitive eye on the sky, one thing’s for sure: the universe has more questions than answers – and that’s what makes it so wonderfully, maddeningly fascinating.
The findings of this research have been published in
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and can be accessed
here.
