Astronomers have detected the most distant fast radio burst (FRB) ever recorded. The burst, named FRB 20220610A, lasted less than a millisecond and originated from a group of two or three merging galaxies. It took eight billion years to reach Earth.
The burst was detected on June 10, 2022 by CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope. The European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) pinpointed the source of the burst.
The burst is one of the most energetic ever observed. It released the equivalent of our sun’s total emission over 30 years in milliseconds.
The burst is 50% older than the team’s previous record. It represents the limit of what is achievable with telescopes today. However, astronomers will soon have the tools to detect even older and more distant bursts.
“If we count up the amount of normal matter in the Universe — the atoms that we are all made of — we find that more than half of what should be there today is missing, We think that the missing matter is hiding in the space between galaxies, but it may just be so hot and diffuse that it’s impossible to see using normal techniques,” said Ryan Shannon, who co-led a study published on the FRB published in the journal Science, in a press statement.
FRBs “sense” this ionised material. Even in space that is almost completely empty, these bursts can “see” all the electrons. This allows scientists to measure how much stuff there is between galaxies according to Shannon.
“While we still don’t know what causes these massive bursts of energy, the paper confirms that fast radio bursts are common events in the cosmos and that we will be able to use them to detect matter between galaxies, and better understand the structure of the Universe,” added Shannon.
