Scientists see blast from 13 billion years ago

WASHINGTON. October 29. KAZINFORM. Astronomers have seen the furthest back in time ever, measuring light from a star that exploded 13 billion years ago, just after the dawn of the universe; Kazinform refers to China Daily.

They traced a gamma-ray burst called GRB 090423 to see the light from the massive star that died 630 million years after the Big Bang that brought the universe into being, they reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

Two separate teams measured the redshift of the object at about 8.2.

This extreme redshift - the highest ever recorded - shows the burst occurred when the universe was less than 5 percent of its current age, Nial Tanvir of Britain's University of Leicester and colleagues reported.

"Gamma ray bursts are the most violent explosions in the universe," he added.

"They are believed to be associated with the formation of stellar-sized black holes or rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron stars during cataclysmic events such as the collapse of a massive star or the coalescence of two compact stellar objects."; Kazinform cites China Daily. See www.chinadaily.com.cn for full version.