英语科普小知识 哈勃望远镜发现迄今最远的超新星.docVIP

NASAs Hubble Space Telescope has found the farthest supernova so far of the type used to measure cosmic distances. Supernova UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson after American President Woodrow Wilson, exploded more than 10 billion years ago. SN Wilson belongs to a special class called Type Ia supernovae. These bright?beacons（指向标）?are prized by astronomers because they provide a consistent level of brightness that can be used to measure the expansion of space. They also yield clues to the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the rate of expansion. ? This new distance record holder opens a window into the early universe, offering important new insights into how these stars explode, said David O. Jones of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., an astronomer and lead author on the paper detailing the discovery. We can test theories about how reliable these detonations are for understanding the evolution of the universe and its expansion. ? The discovery was part of a three-year Hubble program, begun in 2010, to survey faraway Type Ia supernovae and determine whether they have changed during the 13.8 billion years since the explosive birth of the universe. Astronomers took advantage of the sharpness and versatility of Hubbles Wide Field Camera 3 to search for supernovae in near-infrared light and verify their distance with spectroscopy. Leading the work is Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., and Johns Hopkins University. ? Finding remote supernovae provides a powerful method to measure the universes accelerating expansion. So far, Riesss team has uncovered more than 100 supernovae of all types and distances, looking back in time from 2.4 billion years to more than 10 billion years. Of those new discoveries, the team has identified eight Type Ia supernovae, including SN Wilson, that exploded more than 9 billion years ago. ? The Type Ia supernovae give us the most precise?yardstick（码尺）?ever built, but were not quite