In 1985, the first quadruple quasar image was captured. Since then, till today only 50 such quasars have been identified. There has been an increase in the total confirmed Einstein’s crosses by 25 per cent. 12 rare quasars, each offering four distinct quadruple images, commonly called Einstein’s cross was discovered by a group of scientists. The existing understanding about our universe’s rate of expansion and unravel mysteries surrounding dark matter could be reined using this discovery. Multiple telescope observations were combined to confirm this discovery by the Scientists from the Gaia Gravitational Lenses Working Group (GraL), which included PhD student Priyanka Jalan from India. Only 50 such quasars have been identified after the first quadruple quasar image was captured in 1985.
Quasars are distant galaxies, which have an extremely luminous nucleus. Quasars consist of black holes, surrounded by thick gaseous matter, measuring many million times larger than our Sun. Observations made from Quasars are mainly used to study dark matter in determining the evolution of galaxies, and to understand the expansion rate of our universe, which is measured with help of the Hubble-Lemaítre constant. Jalan, who is a final year PhD student at Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital said that more discoveries of quasar quadruples can help resolve the issue of inaccurate values, which will help accurately calculate the rate at which our universe is expanding, as there are two ways of calculating the Hubble-Lamaítre constant, but both values do not match, thus creating a discord. A data analysis of a large number of images were captured using multiple telescopes during the European Space Agency’s (ESA) sky surveys in the last 18 months, which was done by Jalan along with his senior scientist Jean Surdej, a Belgium-based visiting astronomer to ARIES. This rare theory was confirmed by applying the Big Data and Augmented Intelligence, was applied. Massive objects are caused by Gravity like galaxies and emissions from them to bend over time and space. The emissions derived from a quadruple quasar are passed through such deflection causing ‘natural’ lenses. The presence of numerous galaxies, acts as barriers located between a source and Earth, which splits emissions from a quadruple quasar into four images. The closest quadruple quasar from among the twelve newly identified ones, was located 5,000 mega parsecs away. The researchers at ARIES using the institute’s own 3.6m Devasthal Optical Observatory have already started newer quasar observations.
