Letters to Nature
Nature 391, 51-54 (1 January 1998) | doi:10.1038/34124; Received 7 October 1997; Accepted 18 November 1997
Discovery of a supernova explosion at half the age of the Universe
S. Perlmutter1,2, G. Aldering1, M. Della Valle3, S. Deustua1,4, R. S. Ellis5, S. Fabbro1,6,7, A. Fruchter8, G. Goldhaber1,2, D. E. Groom1, I. M. Hook1,10, A. G. Kim1,11, M. Y. Kim1, R. A. Knop1, C. Lidman12, R. G. McMahon5, P. Nugent1, R. Pain1,6, N. Panagia13, C. R. Pennypacker1,4, P. Ruiz-Lapuente14, B. Schaefer15 and N. Walton16
- E. O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, MS 50-232, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
- Center for Particle Astrophysics, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, USA .
- Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universita' di Padova , Vicolo Osservatorio 5, 35122, Padova , Italy.
- Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, USA .
- Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road , Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK.
- LPNHE, Universites Paris VI & VII, T33 Rdc, 4, Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France.
- Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11, Rue de l'Universite , 67000 Strasbourg, France.
- Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 , USA.
- Physics Department, Stockholm University, Box 6730, S-11385 Stockholm, Sweden.
- European Souther Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching bei Munchen, Germany.
- Physique Corpusculaire et Cosmologie, Collège de France, 11, Place Marcelin-Berthelot, 75231 Paris, France.
- European Southern Observatory, Alonso de Cordova, 3107, Vitacura, Casilla 19001, Santiago , 19, Chile.
- Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA; affiliated with the Astrophysics Division, Space Science Department of ESA.
- Department of Astronomy, Faculty of Physics, University of Barcelona, Diagonal 647, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain.
- Department of Physics, Yale University, 260 Whitney Avenue, JWG 463, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
- Isaac Newton Group, Apartado 321, 38780 Santa Cruz de La Palma, The Canary Islands, Spain.
Correspondence to: S. Perlmutter1,2 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to S.P. (e-mail: Email: saul@lbl.gov).
The ultimate fate of the Universe, infinite expansion or a big crunch, can be determined by using the redshifts and distances of very distant supernovae to monitor changes in the expansion rate. We can now find1 large numbers of these distant supernovae, and measure their redshifts and apparent brightnesses; moreover, recent studies of nearby type Ia supernovae have shown how to determine their intrinsic luminosities2, 3, 4—and therefore with their apparent brightnesses obtain their distances. The >50 distant supernovae discovered so far provide a record of changes in the expansion rate over the past several billion years5, 6, 7. However, it is necessary to extend this expansion history still farther away (hence further back in time) in order to begin to distinguish the causes of the expansion-rate changes—such as the slowing caused by the gravitational attraction of the Universe's mass density, and the possibly counteracting effect of the cosmological constant8. Here we report the most distant spectroscopically confirmed supernova. Spectra and photometry from the largest telescopes on the ground and in space show that this ancient supernova is strikingly similar to nearby, recent type Ia supernovae. When combined with previous measurements of nearer supernovae2,5, these new measurements suggest that we may live in a low-mass-density universe.