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I was wondering if you could go in depth, at least to a degree about how incredibly dense objects have strong enough gravity to distort light. To me that's one of the wildest concepts I can imagine, not that I expect you to be all knowing but maybe you've got a good article or something? I don't recall if you've ever made posts about the theory of relativity. Sorry for the long ask!
Well, I know only the basics, things I study in my free time, however, I can try to explain. The distortion of space-time is described by Einstein’s Theory of General Reality. The more massive an object, the more its curvature will be in the space-time fabric.
This distortion in light is known as a gravitational lensing. The gravitational lensing is formed due to a space-time distortion caused by the presence of a large mass body between a distant light source and an observer.
These distortions are widely observed through globular clusters.
Since the amount of lensing depends on the total mass of the cluster, gravitational lensing can be used to ‘weigh’ clusters. This has considerably improved our understanding of the distribution of the ‘hidden’ dark matter in galaxy clusters and hence in the Universe as a whole. The effect of gravitational lensing also allowed a first step towards revealing the mystery of the dark energy.
As gravitational lenses function as magnification glasses it is possible to use them to study distant galaxies from the early Universe, which otherwise would be impossible to see.
Gravitational lensing happens on all scales – the gravitational field of galaxies and clusters of galaxies can lens light, but so can smaller objects such as stars and planets. Even the mass of our own bodies will lens light passing near us a tiny bit, although the effect is too small to ever measure.
