The oldest and most distant supernova, 12,000 million years old, was discovered.

The most distant and oldest supernova. Thanks to the work of the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have been able to see the early universe.

Observing a distant supernova is like looking back in time. The explosion allowed astronomers to observe what the universe looked like billions of years ago. Experts have now discovered the oldest and most distant supernova ever recorded.
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The discovery, based on data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, was announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
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Scientists analyzed web images. About 80 supernovae were discovered in one small patch of sky. Almost all of them are farther away than anyone has known before, and the universe is only 2 billion years old, making James Webb the ideal tool for searching for distant points of light in the universe.
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“(Webb) is a large telescope. This is about 10 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope in terms of light-gathering area,” said Justin Birrell, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
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In addition to being able to see most of the sky, Webb is sensitive to longer wavelengths of light. These can also indicate the presence of supernovae. “We know these distant supernovae exist. But before that, we couldn’t see them.”
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The Webb's increased size and sensitivity allow us to capture things that other telescopes cannot. “I think it's cool to see that. These supernovae can be recovered in Webb data,” said Ido Berger, a Harvard astronomer who was not involved in the new research.
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These data add to the record of the growth of exploding stars during different periods of the universe's history. Although the discovery of about 80 distant supernovae in a small patch of sky is significant, Berger pointed out that
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“This is still a small fraction of all the supernovae detected in surveys conducted over larger, shallower areas. There are more than 10,000 supernovae per year,” he said, “but these supernovae are younger and closer to Earth. This makes Webb’s discovery extremely important.” This is because distant supernovae can represent a historical epoch of the universe.

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Looking at the past through a supernova

In order to search for distant supernovae, the researchers compared several images that Webb took over the course of a year, looking for light sources that appeared or disappeared in the images. This is what experts call it. This “transient light” has allowed astronomers not only to detect dozens of supernovae, but…
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But the nature of light also suggests that the explosion occurred billions of years ago, long before Webb could trace that distance back to a phenomenon known as “redshift” in cosmology when light travels through space and its wavelengths are stretched like a rubber band.
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This makes the wavelength of the light “longer,” and enters the infrared part of the spectrum. Which cannot be seen with the naked eye, but a properly equipped telescope can see it clearly. Different properties of redshift It gives us information about different periods in the history of the universe.
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In other words, in modern times there is a redshift of “zero” and the redder you move the better. The greater the number of redshifts, the older the supernova. For example, motion toward redshift 2 indicates that the supernova occurred when the universe was about 3.3 billion years old.
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But one of the newly discovered supernovas has a redshift of 3.6, meaning it formed when the universe was only 1.8 billion years old. In other words, the supernova is 12 billion years old, which is the oldest number ever discovered. This information helps us understand what the universe was like before Earth existed.
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“The universe is approximately 14 billion years old, but these supernovae come from a time when the universe was only 2-3 billion years old, which is equivalent to the age of a human being in their teens,” Birrell said.

Insights into the early universe

This new information will provide a starting point for researchers to investigate the nature of the early universe. How are stars born? What happens when it expires? This is what Peerle noticed. Distant stars are often too faint to be seen even with the most powerful telescopes. But exploding stars are brighter and easier to detect.
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Some types of supernovae in the sample may provide new insights. For example, Webb has discovered at least one supernova that astronomers classify as Category 1a, the brightest group that can be used as a “ruler” to measure long distances in space.
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“Finding these high-redshift supernovae is important for cosmological measurements,” Berger said. On the other hand, it also provides information in fields that study more mysterious things like dark energy.
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Supernovas are an important part of the universe we live in. “If stars had not exploded, life as we know it would not exist,” Berel said. The elements necessary for life on Earth were scattered by such explosions while the universe was still young. It forms the basis of our planet and life on it. Supernovas are an important part of our story. Although it is far from us

Researched and edited by Witit Borompichaichartkul

Origin

nationalgeographic.com