The Hubble, About to Be Outclassed, Is Still Making Record-Setting Discoveries

There are people in their 30s who have never lived in a world without the Hubble Space Telescope peering into the cosmos. The venerable observatory was launched in April 1990, back when George H.W. Bush was in the White House, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the number one box office hit, and gas went for a buck a gallon. It’s only fitting then that this week, the very old telescope made a very important discovery of an exceedingly old star—the oldest, indeed, that’s ever been detected. As NASA announced, a new paper published in Nature reports that Hubble has spotted a star that is a staggering 12.9 billion years old, meaning it existed when the universe was only 7% of its current age. The previous record holder, spotted by Hubble in 2018, was a comparatively young 9 billion years old, shining when the universe was 30% of its current age. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The new star, dubbed Earendel, which means “morning star” in Old English, does not even exist anymore—its light has been traveling to us over the past nearly 13 billion years, long after the star itself has winked out. The late Earendel might not have been detected at all if it weren’t for a trick of physics and optics known as gravitational lensing. Originally posited by Albert Einstein, gravitational lensing occurs when light from a distant object passes around a closer massive object (like a star). The gravity of the intervening object acts like a sor...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news