Unveiling
the Fate of the Universe
Hubble
is offering a glimpse of the fate of the universe, thanks to
the telescope’s ability to view exploding stars known as
supernovas
in more distant realms than ever before. By
measuring how bright supernovas appear, Hubble can tell us the
distance to both the supernovas and their home galaxies. Since
we know that the closest supernovas are the youngest and the
most distant supernovas are the oldest, astronomers can use
them to look at the behavior of the cosmos at different points
in the history of the universe. By using Hubble images of extremely
remote supernovas, scientists recently made the remarkable
discovery
that younger parts of the universe are expanding faster than
older parts--suggesting that the expansion of the universe will
continue to speed up in the future.
