Humanity has just received a 13 billion-year-old light signal in space

A 10-second gamma-ray burst, dating from just 730 million years after the Big Bang, has just been recorded by scientists.

It provides a unique insight into the earliest period of the universe.

On March 14, 2025, the French-Chinese satellite SVOM (Space-based multi-band astronomical Variable Objects Monitor) recorded a short but extremely energetic gamma-ray burst.

The signal, which lasted around 10 seconds, was labeled GRB 250314A and is typical of the collapse of a massive star.

Thanks to rapid international collaboration, the researchers were soon able to locate the source and analyze it in detail.

Global collaboration and technological precision

Less than two hours after the alert, NASA’s Swift Observatory was able to pinpoint the exact position.

Telescopes in the Canary Islands, Chile and elsewhere helped to estimate the distance, which was confirmed with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Professor Andrew Levan from Radboud University, lead author of the study, said:

– Only Webb could directly show that this light came from a supernova, a collapsing massive star. This observation also shows that we can use Webb to find individual stars when the universe was only five percent of its current age, he said.

In addition to being a record in distance and age, the observation also presented an extremely pronounced time dilation.

Although the explosion itself lasted a few seconds, it took several months to observe the full evolution of the supernova, because the expansion of the universe stretched the travel of light and thus also the perception of time.

Surprising similarity to modern supernovae

The observation is not only remarkable because of its age.

Scientists had expected stars from the Reionization Period to have a different chemical composition with fewer heavy elements, which would result in different supernovae.

But spectroscopic data from James Webb revealed something surprising.

The supernova looks very much like the ones we see today.

– We approached the task with an open mind. And now Webb shows us that this supernova looks exactly like modern supernovae, says Professor Nial Tanvir from the University of Leicester, co-author of the study.

This discovery raises new questions about how quickly the universe was structured after the Big Bang and how early complex star formation could take place.

The observation marks a technological and scientific breakthrough and suggests that the early stars of the universe may have been more advanced than previously thought.