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posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 15 2021, @10:49PM   Printer-friendly

Rerun of supernova blast expected to appear in 2037:

[...] looking far beyond the solar system, astronomers have added a solid prediction of an event happening deep in intergalactic space: an image of an exploding star, dubbed Supernova Requiem, which will appear around the year 2037. Although this rebroadcast will not be visible to the naked eye, some future telescopes should be able to spot it.

It turns out that this future appearance will be the fourth-known view of the same supernova, magnified, brightened, and split into separate images by a massive foreground cluster of galaxies acting like a cosmic zoom lens. Three images of the supernova were first found from archival data taken in 2016 by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

The multiple images are produced by the monster galaxy cluster's powerful gravity, which distorts and magnifies the light from the supernova far behind it, an effect called gravitational lensing. First predicted by Albert Einstein, this effect is similar to a glass lens bending light to magnify the image of a distant object.

The three lensed supernova images, seen as tiny dots captured in a single Hubble snapshot, represent light from the explosive aftermath. The dots vary in brightness and color, which signify three different phases of the fading blast as it cooled over time.

"This new discovery is the third example of a multiply imaged supernova for which we can actually measure the delay in arrival times," explained lead researcher Steve Rodney of the University of South Carolina in Columbia. "It is the most distant of the three, and the predicted delay is extraordinarily long. We will be able to come back and see the final arrival, which we predict will be in 2037, plus or minus a couple of years."

The light that Hubble captured from the cluster, MACS J0138.0-2155, took about four billion years to reach Earth. The light from Supernova Requiem needed an estimated 10 billion years for its journey, based on the distance of its host galaxy.

The team's prediction of the supernova's return appearance is based on computer models of the cluster, which describe the various paths the supernova light is taking through the maze of clumpy dark matter in the galactic grouping. Dark matter is an invisible material that comprises the bulk of the universe's matter and is the scaffolding upon which galaxies and galaxy clusters are built.

Each magnified image takes a different route through the cluster and arrives at Earth at a different time, due, in part, to differences in the length of the pathways the supernova light followed.

Journal Reference:
Steven A. Rodney, Gabriel B. Brammer, Justin D. R. Pierel, et al. A gravitationally lensed supernova with an observable two-decade time delay, Nature Astronomy (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01450-9)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @11:30PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @11:30PM (#1178145)

    good gig if you can get it

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @12:52AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @12:52AM (#1178160)

      I predict Trump won the 2020 election and sent Robert E. Lee to defeat Afghanistan.

    • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday September 16 2021, @05:07AM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Thursday September 16 2021, @05:07AM (#1178191)

      It's only in the past if you look in the wrong direction.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @06:26AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @06:26AM (#1178211)

    Again, could have sworn there was an earlier sub, but an actual Soylentil, and not a bot, of this exact same story? What the Faq is going on? Are we actively discouraging member submissions?

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @11:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @11:38AM (#1178240)

      It was rerouted around a different black whole, now arriving late.

  • (Score: 2) by corey on Thursday September 16 2021, @11:27AM

    by corey (2202) on Thursday September 16 2021, @11:27AM (#1178239)

    Cool, maybe the JWST will be up by then… can be its first mission.

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