death from afar

ok, way WAY afar

i have to credit my friend's dad for pointing me to the nerdglee in this discovery.  using the Swift satellite, a tremendous gamma ray burst was detected. it was the farthest and oldest object we have ever witnessed dying. it exploded on the other side of the visible universe around 13 billion years ago when the universe was only a baby. it is believed that it will now evolve into a black hole.

the picture above is the faint infrared afterglow of the boom.  that afterglow has been zooming thru space for 13,000,000 years. 

(perspective: our solar system is only 4.6 billion years old)

wonder if any of my afterglow is still flying out there...