Astronomers pinpoint the origin of a 10 billion-year-old millisecond signal from space
A flash of radio waves from a young galaxy 3 billion years after the Big Bang is lighting up 80% of the universe’s history.
In 2024, astronomers utilizing the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa managed to trace a mysterious radio burst back to its origin, more than 10 billion years ago in the early universe. The burst, labeled FRB 20240304B, was detected as a fleeting flash of intense radio waves lasting just milliseconds. The discovery, published in Science, marks the most distant fast radio burst with an identified host galaxy.
Fast radio bursts, which have baffled scientists for over two decades, are thought to originate from young, highly magnetized neutron stars called magnetars. FRB 20240304B's host galaxy, however, was a small, young galaxy with a low metal content, containing only about 10 million times the mass of our Sun. The host galaxy's infrared spectrum, observed by the James Webb Space Telescope, confirmed its age as approximately 10.6 billion years old.
The burst's dispersion provided crucial information about the distance and the universe's expansion. The host galaxy's properties, including its young age and low metal content, align with theories suggesting that fast radio bursts are produced by magnetars. Moreover, this discovery sheds light on the universe's evolution over 80% of its history, offering insights into the distribution of charged matter and magnetic fields across cosmic time.
Written by urgent.news from The Conversation AU's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
