National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Most Distant Object Found; Light Pierced "Dark Age" Fog


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A brief but powerful flash of light known as a gamma-ray burst, seen as a red dot at right, is evidence of the most distant object yet spied in the universe, astronomers said in October 2009.

Scientists think longer-lasting gamma-ray bursts happen when a massive star explodes, as seen in the artist's illustration at left.

Illustration by D. Barry, NASA; infrared image courtesy A. J. Levan & N. R. Tanvir