Astronomers may have detected smoke signals generated by a group of supernovas that blew up when the universe was only about 1.2 billion years old. If correct, the researchers have detected would be one of the earliest known signs of supernova-produced dust in the universe and the very earliest detected by a gamma-ray burst. The exploding stars are too faint and lie too far away to be seen directly. But the smoke, or star dust, they produced when they erupted now appears to have been detected. The brilliant afterglow of a much more powerful type of eruption, a gamma-ray burst, has revealed the dust's existence, a new analysis shows. Read more