The furthest thing ever.....
I read a story to my daughter called "I Love You This Much" wherein two rabbits, tongue-twistingly called Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare compete to say how much they love each other. At one point, Little Nutbrown Hare says that "Nothing can be further then the sky", and now we know just how far that is.
The combination of the orbiting Swift Observatory and a ground network of telescopes have captured a gamma ray blast and after glow from an exploding star 13.035 billion (thats billion with a b) light years away - from when the universe was only 680 million years old. Thats pretty cool, but whats even cooler is how the network of telescopes coordinates with the satellite. The satellite detects the gamma ray, and pinpoints where it came from. Immediately following, an alert goes out world wide for x-ray telescopes to zoom in on the site to catch the afterglow before it quickly fades. It is a testament to science that we can detect and track these things so reliably.
