According to Engadget, the James Webb Space Telescope and an international team of observatories have spotted a supernova from a staggering 13 billion years ago. The European Space Agency announced the sighting of a gamma-ray burst from a star that exploded when the universe was a mere 730 million years old. This discovery shatters the previous record for the oldest supernova, which was from when the universe was 1.8 billion years old—a difference of over a billion years. Webb even managed to detect the host galaxy of this ancient explosion. Co-author Andrew Levan noted this proves Webb can find individual stars from when the universe was only 5% of its current age, calling the event “very rare and very exciting.” The entire detection, from initial alert to age confirmation, happened in under 17 hours.
The Surprising Familiarity
Here’s the thing that’s really bending scientists’ minds. This 13-billion-year-old explosion looks, for all intents and purposes, just like a modern supernova. Researchers expected a profound difference. I mean, the early universe was a different place—stars were thought to be purer, made of mostly hydrogen and helium, more massive, and with much shorter lives. You’d think their final acts would be unique, right? But as co-author Nial Tanvir put it, Webb showed it “looks exactly like modern supernovae.” That’s a huge clue. It suggests that the fundamental physics of how the most massive stars die was already firmly in place when the cosmos was in its infancy. Basically, the universe had its act together way earlier than we thought.
The Observatory Relay Race
This wasn’t a one-telescope show. It was a perfectly executed cosmic relay race. It started with NASA’s Swift Observatory spotting the initial X-ray flash and pinpointing the location. That alert sent the Nordic Optical Telescope in Spain into action, whose data hinted this thing was *really* far away. The baton then passed to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, which estimated the mind-blowing age: 730 million years after the Big Bang. All of this, from first blip to confirmed ancient relic, in under 17 hours. That coordination is almost as impressive as the discovery itself. It shows how modern astronomy works—a global network of instruments, from space and the ground, working in concert to chase down the faintest whispers from the past.
What Comes Next
So what now? The team has been granted more time on Webb to specifically hunt for these early gamma-ray bursts and, crucially, study the galaxies they illuminate. As Levan said, that afterglow gives Webb a “fingerprint” of the host galaxy. That’s the next frontier. We’re not just finding ancient exploding stars anymore; we’re using them as flashlights to see the first galaxies in detail. Every one of these rare events is a chance to peek into the nursery where the first stars and structures were born. And given how surprisingly “normal” this one looked, the next one might hold the key to showing us when things actually *started* to be different. The early universe is getting a full forensic examination, and Webb is the lead detective.
