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Article: Blast from the past gives clues about early universe.
- Article from:
- NewsRx Health & Science
- Article date:
- November 15, 2009
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Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope have gained tantalizing insights into the nature of the most distant object ever observed in the Universe -- a gigantic stellar explosion known as a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB).
The explosion was detected on April 23 by NASA's Swift satellite, and scientists soon realized that it was more than 13 billion light-years from Earth. It represents an event that occurred 630 million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was only four percent of its current age of 13.7 billion years.
"This explosion provides an unprecedented look at an era when the Universe was very young ...