Dark Matter May Gravitationally Lens Cosmic Neutrino Source, Aiding Blazar Research
Astronomers, led by Silke Britzen at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, have identified a distant blazar, PKS 2233-148, whose jet appears to have been gravitationally lensed by an unseen source of dark matter. Blazars are active galactic nuclei that emit jets of ionized matter at near light speed, with one jet often pointed directly towards Earth. The team observed a sudden displacement in the blazar's jet and a rapid gamma-ray flash, which they interpret as potential signatures of dark matter lensing. This phenomenon occurs when a massive object, like a clump of dark matter, bends the path of light from a distant source. The observations were made using a combination of instruments, including the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) in the U.S. for radio observations, the Fermi-LAT space telescope for gamma-rays, and the Swift-XRT observatory for X-rays. 
