> The phenomenon of strong gravitational lensing has been first discussed already in the late 1700s<p>That's kind of surprising to me. I assumed in the newtonian picture gravity would not bend light.
The bit I find amazing in these galaxy fields is the apparent randomness of the orientation of each galaxy. Why is this? Are we seeing a remnant of chaotic behavior where tiny random variations at the smallest scale in the early universe led to the wildly diverse objects that we see today? There is great variation in the color, size, and shape of galaxies too, but somehow it’s the apparent orientation that baffles my intuition.
It still blows my mind when I come across images brimming with galaxies. How insignificant are we in the vast universe? Even our entire solar system, it’s likely not even a blip in the cosmic scheme. Just wow…