Emily Chan
A NASA telescope has found more exploding stars. The James Webb Space Telescope uncovered around 80 ancient supernovae in the sky.
According to astronomers, they discovered 10 times more supernovae than were previously believed to have existed during the early days of the universe.
Some of these stellar explosions occurred when the universe was about two billion years old, marking some of the oldest ones ever to be found.
Today, the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. A supernova is when a star makes a huge explosion, sending out vast amounts of energy as its core collapses in on itself.
It leaves behind a black hole, a neutron star, or a white dwarf, depending on how large the original star was.
Astronomers participating in the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) detected the new supernovae in a tiny patch of sky.
The patch was so small that it was equivalent to the thickness of a grain of rice when it’s held at arm’s length.
They were able to detect the ancient star explosions with the help of a phenomenon called cosmological redshift.
Cosmological redshift is when the light from faraway galaxies is more red than it should be. The redder appearance happens because the universe is expanding, which causes spaces between galaxies to stretch.
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