Huge explosion in the early Universe

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Abstract
Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are bright flashes of high-energy photons that can last for tens of minutes; they are generally associated with galaxies that have a high rate of star formation and probably arise from the collapsing cores of massive stars, which produce highly relativistic jets (collapsar model1). Here we describe γ- and X-ray observations of the most distant GRB ever observed (GRB 050904): its redshift2,3 (z) of 6.29 means that this explosion happened 12.8 billion years ago, corresponding to a time when the Universe was just 890 million years old, close to the reionization era4. This means that not only did stars form in this short period of time after the Big Bang, but also that enough time had elapsed for them to evolve and collapse into black holes.