Rare supernova may reveal the secret of dark energy

Astronomers Discover the First Gravitationally Lensed Superluminous Supernova

doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae1d61
Credibility: 989
#Supernova

Astronomers have discovered an extremely unusual supernova whose light traveled more than 10 billion years to reach Earth and may help to unravel one of the greatest enigmas of cosmology: dark energy, the mysterious force responsible for making the universe expand ever faster.

This stellar explosion, named SN 2025wny, is a superluminous event-that is, incredibly bright, much more so than a common supernova-and occurred when the universe was only about 3.5 billion years old.

What makes it truly special, however, is the phenomenon of gravitational lensing: a massive galaxy located exactly between us and the supernova acts as a natural lens, bending and magnifying its light according to Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Because of this, the light from the same explosion reaches Earth by different paths, creating multiple images of the supernova visible at the same time, but at different moments in its evolution.

These differences in trajectory generate delays in the arrival time of light-sometimes days or weeks between one image and another.

These delays depend directly on the rate of expansion of the universe, known as the Hubble constant.

By precisely measuring these intervals, scientists can calculate how fast the cosmos is expanding and thus better understand the role of dark energy in this acceleration.

The discovery began with the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, which detected the initial brightness but could not separate the multiple images.

It was the Liverpool Telescope in La Palma that confirmed the lensing effect by observing the distinct images.

Complementary observations came from powerful instruments such as the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope, which allowed the event to be studied in detail even at such a great distance.

This supernova is rare because it combines two exceptional factors: its extreme natural brightness and the extra amplification by gravitational lensing, which made it detectable by medium-sized telescopes despite the enormous distance.

Researchers highlight that they had never found anything exactly like this before.

The great scientific potential lies in resolving the “Hubble tension,” a current problem in cosmology: measurements of the universe’s expansion made from the cosmic microwave background (the echo of the Big Bang) give a different value than those obtained with nearby supernovae and other galaxies.

Observations like this, in very distant regions and with precise time delays, can indicate which measurement is more accurate and reveal whether dark energy has constant properties or varies over cosmic time.

The research, led by scientists from Liverpool John Moores University, Caltech, Stockholm University, and other institutions, was published on December 5, 2025, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The authors believe that similar events, when found in the future, will provide valuable data for understanding the force that dominates about 68% of the universe and drives its accelerated expansion.

Published in 03/12/2026 22h28

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