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Mystery of dazzling supernova solved
Topic Started: Apr 24 2014, 08:36 PM (144 Views)
CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27118405

An exceptionally bright supernova that baffled scientists has been explained.

It is so luminous because a galaxy sitting in front amplifies its light - making it appear 100 billion times more dazzling than our Sun.

This cosmic magnifying glass lay hidden between Earth and the supernova - and has now been detected with a telescope in Hawaii.

The discovery, reported in the journal Science, settles an important controversy in the field of astronomy.



Interesting discovery. I'd heard about gravitational lenses before, but I wasn't aware of any objects that looked brighter than normal because of them. I wonder whether there are any other objects like this?
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Zero Revolution
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King Zero

That's actually really cool. I'd never heard about something of this nature happening before, so it's interesting. How long did it take for this to be discovered? Because I thought I heard about this Supernova quite some time ago...unless I'm thinking of something else.
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

The supernova itself was discovered in 2010, and they weren't sure how to explain its brightness. Someone came up with the idea that it might be gravitational lensing by a large object - but it's taken a while for them to find any evidence of the large object in question.
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