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An overview of the CLASS gravitational lens survey; the Hubble constant and
constraints on the cosmological constant.
Ian Browne (Jodrell)
CLASS is the largest and most systematic survey for
galaxy-mass gravitational lens systems yet undertaken; more than 10,000
compact radio sources have been mapped with a resolution of 0.2 arcsec
and 17 new lens systems have been confirmed. Radio monitoring has
resulted in 3 determinations of time delays yielding values for the
Hubble constant in the range 59 to 69 km/sec/Mpc. Preliminary analysis if
the statistics of the 2000 strongest sources constrain the cosmological
constant to be be less than 0.84 for a flat universe.
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