Review The Scales of Gravitational Lensing Francesco De Paolis 1,2,†,*, Mosè Giordano 1,2,†, Gabriele Ingrosso 1,2,†, Luigi Manni 1,2,†, Achille Nucita 1,2,† and Francesco Strafella 1,2,† 1 Department of Mathematics and Physics “Ennio De Giorgi”, University of Salento, CP 193, I-73100 Lecce, Italy;
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[email protected] (F.S.) 2 INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), Sezione di Lecce CP-193, Italy † These authors contributed equally to this work. * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +39-0832-297493; Fax: +39-0832-297505 Academic Editor: Lorenzo Iorio Received: 5 January 2016; Accepted: 7 March 2016; Published: date Abstract: After exactly a century since the formulation of the general theory of relativity, the phenomenon of gravitational lensing is still an extremely powerful method for investigating in astrophysics and cosmology. Indeed, it is adopted to study the distribution of the stellar component in the Milky Way, to study dark matter and dark energy on very large scales and even to discover exoplanets. Moreover, thanks to technological developments, it will allow the measure of the physical parameters (mass, angular momentum and electric charge) of supermassive black holes in the center of ours and nearby galaxies. Keywords: gravitational lensing; keyword; keyword 1. Introduction In 1911, while he was still involved in the development of the general theory of relativity (subsequently published in 1916), Einstein made the first calculation of light deflection by the Sun [1].