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Friday July 10, 2009
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Chalk it up to some sophisticated digital imaging: Astronomers have discovered the oldest and farthest supernova ever detected, AFP reports, a huge star that exploded 11 billion years ago.
This time around, scientists tried something different: they compared several years of images taken from one portion of the sky, which let them look for objects that changed in brightness over time, according to the article. Essentially, the astronomers "subtracted" the changes from the original image--which erased the entire galaxy save for the supernova, which had changed.
"What we're looking for are things that were there one year, but which weren't there the next," said Mark Sullivan, an astronomer from the University of Oxford in the UK and one of the authors of the study, in a separate BBC report.
Back in April, NASA's Swift Observatory detected a 13-billion-year-old gamma-ray burst, most likely from a supernova near the beginning of the universe. But this latest discovery marks the first confirmation of a full-on star explosion. (Image credit: NASA/RCW 86 supernova)
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July 10, 2009 6:45 PM
The ramifications of this research are particularly interesting, considering the average lifespan of a Sol-like star is something on the other of 8 billion years. Now while there's no firm rule around stellar longevity, we know that a star that's only a couple billion years old is a young one indeed.
That means that if our best calculations base on the cosmic background radiation point us in the direction of 13-15 billion years as the age of the Universe, that would mean that these supernovae would have to be from stars that only lived to see about 2-4 billion years...very very young by a star's standard. Supernovae are usually from supermassive stars at that (massive enough to go nova but not massive enough to create black holes) - which makes you wonder what kind of stars there were back then!
July 11, 2009 10:45 PM
They're so focused on all these novas and super-novas, that I suspect some small miniscule portion of the backround of these photos just might contain something a LOT MORE important!! ...lets go back to the area 51 debate: the whole aliens landed/aliens never landed. its real; its a hoax. now relate that to the super-nova photos. is it possible some of these photo images of recent years just might contain an image that might be alien space vehicles? Its the biggest question on earth, but anybody who seriously spends government time and money on it is considered a nutjob. what exactly do these images of supernova gases and exploding stars teach us anyways? anything? 11 billion years for what, the light to reach earth? meanwhile we look at images of space events that technically dont exist anymore. in these photos of supernovas, are there any more planets???? ...the united states government might have seen some things in these hubble space photos that hint at alien activity, but it might be secret classified stuff. after all, world-wide panic. you can wonder about alien worlds, but we might not like what we find.