51¹ú²úÊÓƵ

A team of academics has helped to set a new record for the most distant astronomical object yet observed: an explosion 13.1 billion light years away. The 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Exeter team's detection of a gamma-ray burst has been detailed in two papers published in the science journal Nature. Such bursts, which are thought to accompany the death of massive stars, show that these suns were forming 630 million years after the Big Bang. Exeter astronomers Alasdair Allan and Tim Naylor were responsible for the sighting.