Explosion Illuminates Invisible Galaxy

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Explosion Illuminates Invisible Galaxy in the Dark Ages

Cambridge, MA - More than 12 billion years ago a star exploded, ripping itself apart and blasting its remains outward in twin jets at nearly the speed of light. At its death it glowed so brightly that it outshone its entire galaxy by a million times. This brilliant flash traveled across space for 12.7 billion years to a planet that hadn't even existed at the time of the explosion - our Earth. By analyzing this light, astronomers learned about a galaxy that was otherwise too small, faint and far away for even the Hubble Space Telescope to see.

"This star lived at a very interesting time, the so-called dark ages just a billion years after the Big Bang," says lead author Ryan Chornock of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

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[Aggie]

This is mind blowing and very difficult to comprehend really, as we are so hooked on the idea of linear time:

"This brilliant flash traveled across space for 12.7 billion years to a planet that hadn't even existed at the time of the explosion - our Earth"

....just mind blowing...

[DecoNoir]

Wow, really great stuff here. Practically staring into the birth of all that we know in ways we can barely comprehend.