One of the most terrifying and powerful cosmic death objects has unexpectedly come into view of Hubble’s lens after traveling from a world 11.5 billion years ago.
This death object is a massive supernova, incredibly strong, which appeared when the universe was just over 2 billion years old. According to Space, NASA initially overlooked it while analyzing Hubble’s overwhelming data archive, as the supernova was too distant and difficult to observe.
However, with the astonishing clarity of the data provided by Hubble, the moment was “uncovered” by a research team led by Associate Professor Patrick Kelly from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota.
The clip reconstructed from Hubble’s valuable observational data shows how the cosmic “death object” emerged.
In the clip released by NASA, one can see a massive star suddenly exploding violently, hitting viewers with a dazzling bright area, which then continues to emit a strange cloud after the first explosion.
“You see different colors in three different images. You have a large star, the core collapses, it creates a shock, it heats up, and then you will see it cool down over more than a week. I think that might be one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen!” – NASA quoted Professor Kelly.
This event formed what astronomers call a “supernova,” the terrifying death of a star, which our own world will experience in about 5 billion years when the Sun runs out of energy and dies.
As previous studies have shown, stars—including the Sun—after exhausting their energy will expand into a red giant during the “dying” phase, then explode into a supernova. After the explosion, what remains could be a white dwarf, a form of “zombie” that is small yet energy-rich.
Over time, white dwarfs can continue to explode, with the largest ones potentially evolving into stellar black holes.
Thus, Hubble’s image serves as a chilling forecast of our future. An explosion of this nature could “decimate” at least a few planets around the parent star, if we manage to escape being engulfed during the Sun’s expansion into a red giant.
However, this forecasting image is on a much larger scale, as the supernova captured by Hubble is thought to be a “red supergiant,” with a radius 530 times that of the Sun. It is this terrifying size that allows us to see it from a world 11.5 billion light-years away, aided by a few fortunate optical factors.
This image is hidden behind the Abell 370 galaxy cluster, which Hubble discovered in 2010. Hubble captured the cluster just hours after the star began to die, allowing for real-time observations of the entire terrifying process through three moments that fully represent the three stages of the supernova.
Real images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, with the first image color-enhanced for easier observation – (Photo: HUBBLE/NASA)
It is the Abell 370 galaxy that amplified Hubble’s “eye” to see this object, as the light is bent around the galaxy cluster due to its gravitational force, causing the entire cluster to form a gravitational lens that allows Earth viewers to see objects that would otherwise be beyond reach.
Due to the distance of 11.5 billion light-years, the images of what happened with the aforementioned supernova also represent a view of the universe from 11.5 billion years ago, not the present. At that time, the primordial universe was believed to be filled with massive and aggressive objects, of which the dead star is one example.
At this distance, this object also becomes one of the most distant and oldest supernovae ever detected by humans. Beyond forecasting the future, it also serves as a rare and precious window to glimpse the dawn of the universe.
