A faint, tiny flash of red light glimpsed at the Cosmic Dawn more than 13 billion years ago has smashed the record for the earliest supernova ever observed.

It appeared just 720 million years after the Big Bang , smack bang during the Epoch of Reionization , soaring past the previous record-holder, a supernova that exploded when the Universe was 1.8 billion years old .

And here's the kicker: The light from the new record-breaker wasn't even boosted by the massive gravitational bending of space-time usually needed to magnify light that distant.

It gets even wilder, though. According to a new analysis of JWST data, the event was just a normal, bog-standard supernova, with no peculiarities that would make it brighter than usual.

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