The James Webb Space Telescope just dropped another cosmic bombshell, and it’s making scientists scratch their heads even more. Turns out, an ancient supernova from 10.2 billion light-years away has been captured not once, not twice, but three times—thanks to a wild phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
And the results? They’re throwing another wrench into how we thought the universe works.
Here’s the deal. Astronomers have been grappling with something called the “Hubble tension.” It’s the mystery of why the universe seems to be expanding at different rates depending on how (and when) you measure it.
When scientists measure the expansion rate (known as the Hubble constant) based on ancient cosmic light like the cosmic microwave background, they get one answer—about 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec (a megaparsec is just over 3 million light-years, FYI).
But when they look at nearby celestial benchmarks, like pulsating stars called Cepheid variables, they get a much faster rate—73.2 km/s/Mpc.

Why is this a big deal? If the universe’s expansion rate doesn’t line up with our best models of cosmology, it suggests there’s something scientists don’t fully understand about how the cosmos works. Enter the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) with its latest discovery.
The JWST recently zoomed in on a galaxy cluster known as PLCK G165.7+67.0 (or G16 if you’re short on breath), which is a whopping 3.6 billion light-years away. Its near-infrared camera picked up three points of light—actually a single supernova whose light was magnified and bent by a galaxy in front of it, thanks to the bending effects of gravity.
This rare lensing effect allowed researchers to calculate a fresh Hubble constant. Their result? 75.4 km/s/Mpc. Another different value. Another headache for scientists trying to make sense of it all.
Why all the drama? According to our current models, a mysterious force called dark energy is supposed to push the universe to expand at a steady pace. But these new findings are like throwing a banana peel under that tidy hypothesis. Something doesn’t add up.

And this isn’t the first time scientists have clashed over this cosmic math. Two “gold-standard” methods for measuring the Hubble constant have already been at odds.
The cosmic microwave background method matches predictions, but measurements based on nearby stars (and now this lensed supernova) keep pointing to faster expansion rates.
For now, we don’t have a clear answer. What we do have is a growing collection of contradictory data that keeps pointing to one thing—our understanding of the universe might need a serious upgrade.
The team behind this latest research plans to keep chasing exploding stars across the galaxy to gather more clues. Who knows what they’ll find next? Stay tuned!