Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
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Scientists have discovered by far the most ancient and distant “fast radio burst,” a type of enigmatic bright radio pulse from deep space, using a sophisticated radio telescope in Australia, reports a new study. The burst, known as FRB 20220610A because it was detected on June 10, 2022, occurred about eight billion years ago, making it about two billion years older than the previous FRB record-holder.
The unprecedented detection not only extends our view of these strange bursts further back in space and time than ever before, it could also help unlock persistent mysteries about our universe, including its expansion rate and the whereabouts of “missing” matter that may lie hidden between galaxies.
For more than a decade, astronomers have been baffled by a class of extremely short and bright flashes from deep space, known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), that have never been fully explained. First discovered in 2007, FRBs are extremely bright pulses of radio light that typically last for a fraction of a second. Some FRBs light up the skies just once, while others curiously repeat their signals, and sometimes exhibit strange periodic patterns. Scientists think these radiant cosmic flares are likely produced by neutron stars, a special type of dead star that is extremely dense and possesses strong magnetic fields, though the exact mechanisms behind the bursts is still a mystery.
Now, scientists led by Stuart Ryder, an astrophysicist at Macquarie University, report the discovery of the first FRB ever seen at “redshift 1,” a cosmological measurement that translates to an age of about eight billion years and a distance of about 10 billion light years. In order to be seen across such a huge swath of time and space, the burst must have been extraordinarily bright. Ryder and his colleagues describe the strange properties of the ancient flash and conclude that “FRB 20220610A and other high-luminosity FRBs are challenging to explain” with current physical models, according to a study published on Thursday in Science.
“Our goal has always been to try and track these fast radio bursts across as much of the universe as we possibly can, for two reasons,” Ryder
