The most distant supernova ever found has raised hopes of determining the ultimate fate of the Universe. Because of its enormous distance - about 5 billion light years - it may help to reveal how quickly the expansion of the Universe is slowing, and so whether the Universe will expand forever or eventually collapse.
Saul Perlmutter of the University of California at Berkeley and his colleagues in the US and Britain have been searching for supernovae in galaxies up to several billion light years away using the Royal Greenwich Observatory's 2.5-metre Isaac Newton Telescope in the Canary Islands. The images, each of which records hundreds of distant galaxies, are then sent electronically to Berkeley, where a computer searches the galaxies for supernovae.
In April, the computer detected a supernova in a faint unnamed galaxy near the border of the constellations of Hercules and Corona Borealis.
Supernovae can shine billions of ...
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