A team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) have used strong gravitational lensing to determine the mass of a galaxy containing a quasar with unprecedented precision, according to a study published in Nature Astronomy. The technique, which is three times more precise than any other, provides insight into the evolution of galaxies in the early universe and black hole development. Gravitational lensing allows scientists to compute the mass of the lensing object by observing how massive objects can bend light coming from background objects. The scientists expect to detect hundreds of these lensing quasars with the ESA-NASA mission Euclid, to be launched this summer with a Falcon-9 SpaceX rocket.
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