快猫短视频

Read more: Click here to read the original, longer version of this story\

A BIZARRELY bright supernova may really have been a normal stellar death 鈥� magnified by a 鈥渓ens鈥� of dark matter.

First seen in 2010, supernova PS1-10afx was 10 to 20 times brighter than otherwise similar star explosions. Its discoverers proposed that a galaxy cluster acted as a gravitational lens, warping space-time and, in effect, focusing the light towards Earth. But no cluster could be found.

Now Robert Quimby of the University of Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues suggest that a blob of invisible dark matter acted as the lens (). If so, finding more oddly bright supernovae could help us gauge how much dark matter the universe holds.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淒ark lens enhanced supernova鈥檚 spark鈥�