The most distant cosmic explosion ever detected by scientists was the result of a massive star's collapse into a black hole 13 billion years ago, scientists said.

The explosion, identified in September by Pennsylvania State University scientists using a NASA satellite, is one of the earliest recorded, the researchers said in an article for the latest edition of the journal Nature.

The burst occurred only 500 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang, offering important insights into the early formation of the universe, scientists say. It took 13 billion years for the light to reach Earth.

The findings based on NASA's new Swift satellite suggest that early stars were much larger than contemporary stars.

Swift, in operation since January 2005, has allowed astronomers to witness much farther explosions than in the past and they are confident it will continue to produce results.

"I think this is a temporary distance record that will be broken some time in the near future," David Burrows, lead scientist for the Swift's telescope, said.