An Einstein ring is an example of strong gravitational lensing,” explained study lead Conor O’Riordan of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany. “All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically. This one is particularly special because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful.”
I would never pretend I can even remotely wrap my head around this, but anything that helps us understand how gravity works seems like a scientific gold mine.
The precise mechanism is beyond me, but suffice it to say that light is affected by gravity.
If you imagine throwing a ball in space in a straight line near a massive body (like a planet), the ball will curve and its new straight path will now be permanently deviated from its original straight line.
Now imagine instead of throwing a ball, you’re emitting rays of light in all directions near a black hole. Light you emit towards the black hole will be lost to it, but light you emitted at an angle to the black hole will swing around it, just like the ball. If you imagine all the light you emitted slightly to the right, left, up, and down doing this, you can imagine that an observer on the other side could see all that light, appearing as though you were slightly right, left, up, and down from the black hole at the same time. This is what creates the ring.
You know how telescopes often use glass lenses to bend light into your eye? A gravitational lens is just a naturally occurring telescope, except that the gravity of a large object is the one bending the light towards us. From what I understand, an Einstein lens is just a gravitational lens where the elements for the lens sit in a particularly good setup.
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