Briefs · Frontier Science
Webb Finds the Oldest Supernova Yet, While 3I/ATLAS Keeps Astronomers Busy
The oldest explosion ever seen looks strangely familiar.
Webb found a supernova from when the universe was only 730 million years old. The previous record stood at 1.8 billion years. This blast is more than a billion years older, and yet it behaves like its modern cousins.
The flash began as a gamma-ray burst on 14 March 2025. Webb looked on 1 July, three and a half months later, when the supernova was expected to shine brightest. The delay was patience, not procrastination. Time itself had stretched the event, as light from the early universe arrives in slow motion.
For the first time at such distance, Webb also found the host galaxy. It appears as a reddened smudge, a few pixels wide. A smudge, after all, is still a signature.
Meanwhile 3I/ATLAS kept astronomers busy. The interstellar comet passed closest to Earth on 19 December, at a safe 270 million kilometres. XMM-Newton caught it in X-ray light on 12 December.
The lesson is paradoxical. The further back we look, the more normal things appear. The early universe was not a different theatre, but rather the same play performed younger. A distant, dazzling dawn, still dressed like today.
Read the original at STScI / NASA Webb
Summary in our own words. The original belongs to its publisher.