A Supernova Explosion That Disappeared Will Reappear Again In 2037!

A Supernova Explosion That Disappeared Will Reappear Again In 2037!

A team of astronomers published the first days of September a study in the journal Nature, in which it is predicted that in 2037 will return to be visible a supernova exploded 10 billion years ago on the other side of the Universe,

How, in fact, can the same star explode twice? We are not talking about a Recurrent Nova, which « turns on » at intervals of years or decades, but a real powerful Supernova. And Supernovae are stars that destroy themselves completely, without any possibility of a second life…

And what’s more, how can astronomers claim to know even the year in which the supernova – not by chance called with the unsympathetic name of REQUIEM – will return to shine? What do you say, let’s try together to figure it out? The deflection of light by a large mass resembles the behavior of a lens that deforms the image of an object.

These phenomena, called « gravitational lensing », until thirty years ago were considered theoretical curiosities. Today, however, thanks to instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope hundreds of them have been localized. And they are very useful to study the distribution of matter and gravity in the universe.