Produced by: Manoj Kumar
A massive supernova, AT 2023adsv, erupted 11.4 billion years ago, marking one of the earliest cosmic explosions ever observed. Detected by the James Webb Space Telescope, its violent energy reshapes our understanding of stellar deaths.
The explosion was found as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), a program revealing the chaotic life cycle of early stars just 2 billion years after the Big Bang.
These ancient stars, 20 times the mass of the sun, underwent powerful explosions due to their metal-poor nature, creating an intense impact on the early universe’s chemical composition.
Supernovas of the first generation stars were excessively violent, blasting heavy elements across galaxies. This seeded the universe for later stellar generations, profoundly altering cosmic evolution.
The first stars, largely hydrogen and helium, forged the first heavy elements during their lifetimes, creating the chemical building blocks for future stars and planets.
Known as Population III stars, these ancient entities were born from simple cosmic soup. Their deaths marked the transition to more complex, metal-rich stellar generations.
David Coulter from the Space Telescope Science Institute explained at the AAS meeting how JWST is helping uncover these early stellar explosions, potentially rewriting cosmic history.
The violent deaths of massive stars birthed new stellar generations, culminating in our sun. This ongoing cycle of creation and destruction defines the universe’s evolution.
The supernova’s extreme nature offers insights into the life and death of the universe’s earliest stars, shaping our understanding of how galaxies like the Milky Way evolved.