The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered the oldest and most distant supernova ever seen — a stellar explosion that took place when the universe was just 1.8 billion years old.
"We're essentially opening a new window on the transient universe," Matthew Siebert, an astronomer who is leading the spectroscopic analysis of the supernovas, said in a statement."Historically, whenever we've done that, we've found extremely exciting things — things that we didn't expect.
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.The second, known as type Ia supernovae, occur when two stars — one of which is the collapsed husk of a star called a white dwarf — spiral toward each other. This causes the white dwarf to strip hydrogen from the star it is spiraling around, creating a runaway reaction that ends in a gigantic thermonuclear explosion.
—Ancient supernova in James Webb telescope image could help solve one of the universe's biggest mysteriesBut attempts to measure the Hubble constant using these standard candles and other methods have produced an alarming discrepancy — the universe appears to be expanding at different rates depending on where we look.