Researchers have made a remarkable discovery by measuring the most well-travelled fast radio burst (FRB) to date. This powerful and fleeting burst of energy has traversed the Universe for approximately eight billion years, a duration that is nearly half the age of the Universe itself. The findings, published in Science, challenge current models of these enigmatic phenomena and reveal insights into the early Universe.
The age of this fast radio burst, named FRB 20220610A, was a significant surprise for the researchers. Stuart Ryder, an astronomer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and co-author of the study, expressed their astonishment: “We didn’t know whether fast radio bursts even existed that far back in time.”
In June 2022, Ryder and his colleagues detected FRB 20220610A using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope in Western Australia. To pinpoint the galaxy of its origin, they employed the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Fast radio bursts are known to experience dispersion as they travel through galaxies and intergalactic space, caused by interactions with hot gas. This dispersion results in a delay between radio waves of distinct frequencies reaching Earth. This phenomenon makes fast radio bursts valuable tools for studying the Universe, as they enable the detection and measurement of invisible intergalactic matter.
The new fast radio burst exhibited an unusually high level of dispersion, suggesting that FRB 20220610A encountered significant obstacles during its eight-billion-year journey. This, combined with the vast distance to its host galaxy, confirmed the previous hypothesis that fast radio bursts become more dispersed as their distance from Earth increases. The burst also emitted 3.5 times more energy than the highest predictions from existing models, prompting a need for adjustments to energy distribution estimations.
Kiyoshi Masui, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, emphasized that the persistence of fast radio bursts over such immense distances is not surprising. These distant bursts offer valuable insights into the Universe’s evolution. “What is exciting is that we’re starting to see them and measure their properties,” Masui stated. “As the sample of these distant bursts grows, they will tell us a lot about how the Universe evolved.”
When researchers examined the host galaxy of FRB 20220610A, they discovered that it consisted of two or three bright clumps, suggesting that the burst might have originated from a group of colliding galaxies. This scenario is indicative of early Universe conditions when numerous galaxies were still forming and encountering “galactic traffic accidents.”
The next phase of research for Ryder and his team is to gain a deeper understanding of the conditions in the early Universe that gave rise to this powerful burst. Their work promises to shed further light on the mysteries of fast radio bursts and the Universe’s distant past.
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Reference: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03264-3
