A new technique enabled the cosmologists to make the find, which should help advance knowledge into these rare phenomena and their role in generating other stars, they said in a report published by the British journal Nature.
A supernova occurs when a massive star runs out of fuel, collapses in upon itself under the force of its own gravity to become a tiny, ultra-dense object called a neutron star.
The star then explodes, sending out a shock wave that reverberates around the galaxy.
The blast distributes elements that are heavier than oxygen, such as iron, calcium and silicon, and enriches the molecular clouds that over the aeons cluster together and form new star systems.
The ancient supernova was found after astronomers compared several years of images taken from a portion of the sky, enabling them to look for objects that changed in brightness over time.
The universe is believed to be 13.7 billion years old, so the supernova marks the death of one of earliest stars in creation.
The previous supernova record was an event that happened around six billion years ago.
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- InformedTexan
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I just responded to another post that I had read two articles today about Greenpeace. Same here.
The first article involved an Arizona state senator who claimed twice in a single speech denying the necessity of protecting the environment that the universe is only 6000 years old. Now this, about an event that occurred 11 billion years ago.
In other words, the first involved an elected official who prefers to live in an intellectual, imaginative, spiritual doll house. The second involved cosmologists who live in an immense, inconceivably old, strange, exciting, challenging universe.
Cripes!
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Any sign of Heaven yet? Pearly gates or anything?
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if the universe is 6000 years old, GOD has a strange sense of humor. i was just looking at sue a 65 million year old t.rex, ancestor to the birds. astounding the world of endless discovery we live in.
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Space. The hilarious frontier.
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- Panzer_Tanzler
- 4 months ago
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Panzer, Great Pic :P
