Gravitational Lensing – Dr. Fatima Abdurrahman (UC Berkeley)

One hundred years ago, Einstein predicted that light rays would bend in the space near a massive object — much as light rays refract in an optical lens. Today, we use this fact to weigh galaxies, to discover planets of other stars, and to “see” invisible black holes. How did this idea of gravitational lensing come about, and how do we use it today to probe all fields of astrophysics?

The presenter, Dr. Fatima Abdurrahman, has just received her PhD in Astronomy from UC Berkeley. Dr. Abdurrahman is a Wonderfest Science Envoy with formidable aspirations in science communication. This Wonderfest Zoom event took place on 5/15/21 as part of the 2021 Mt. Tam Astronomy Program.

[InfiniteJF]

I have always felt that the nuance and subtlety of communication skills is the ultimate measure of intelligence. Improvisational subtext is not a learned skill. The innate ability to utter a word that immediately flowers into several implications is pure delight. And BRILLIANT. All great poets, playwrights, people of letters are born, I think, in Infinite NOW, accessing multiple meanings of an utterance INSTANTLY. To the observers, it is wonderfully stimulating and arousing. There is nothing more erotic than such intelligent. AND YOU'VE GOT IT, BABY. I have not viewed a more enlivening presentation in my life than your presentation on aliens and the Ferme Paradox. You left me limp and spent.

[mossig]

A couple of things.
Escape velocity is not explained properly. 10 meters per second is much slower then a bullet fired up into the air, yet the bullet falls down. A balloon can rise at 1 cm per second for an extended period of time so it also escapes.
Only outside the atmosphere is this velocity accurate.
According to standard cosmological theory, energy coming from a distant object will not bend until fairly close to a massive object. The point of the beginning of the bending can not be closer or further away then the focal point after the passed object. The distance must be the same. This means that we as an observer must have the lensing object smack in the middle between the receiver and the emitter.
This is why Earths moon does not act as a lens because there is no light source on the other side of the moon at the same distance as we are from the moon.
The fact that all three object are moving relative to each other will have an effect also making the focal point to become very tiny and for a very short time. This is not what is observed.
OK. Here is my explanation and it's not standard cosmology.
The universe is not gravity based but energy based.
An atom that has a high energy level will instantaneously transfer this energy to an atom with lower energy no matter the distance. We don't see stars as they where in the past but as they are now.
An atom doesn't have a nucleus, it just have electrons and they both repel and attract each other depending on their separation. The measures smallest distance between them is what now is called the nucleus. This is however wrong. What we call gravitation is the attraction between the electrons in each atom in a grid.
Atoms that can't radiate energy being inside the grid will transform to heavier elements by adding electrons.
This is the reason why Earth is expanding due to it's atmosphere and the moon is shrinking because lack of it.
Sorry but I don't have time to explain further now. Anyone interested just ask and I will present some facts from studies and scientists, plus experiments.