Cosmic explosions in the young Universe

摘要

Astronomers thrive in unexplored territory - whether that is the depths of dust clouds in our Galaxy, the immediate surroundings of a black hole or the farthest reaches of the Universe. For several decades, they have used the largest telescopes on Earth and in space to find the most distant sources of light in the Universe. The more distant the object, the longer its light has taken to travel to Earth, and the further back in time we can look. The most distant galaxies tell us how the Universe looked just 500 million years after the Big Bang12. Of course, the more luminous an object, the easier it is to detect at large distances. The discovery of new types of luminous stellar explosion, which only a few years ago were unknown, has opened a new window on the distant Universe. On page 228 of this issue, Cooke et aV present the discovery of two distant stellar explosions, both of which seem to be superluminous supernovae*.