Radio transmission from 8 billion years ago hits Earth

Scientists who study space have found a strange burst of radio waves that took a very long time, about 8 billion years, to travel to our planet Earth. The fast radio burst is a really far away and powerful signal that scientists have seen.

Fast radio bursts are really strong and really quick bursts of radio waves that we don’t know where they come from. The first FRB was found in 2007, and since then, scientists have detected many more of these fast flashes from faraway places in space.

The explosion called FRB 20220610A was very short, lasting less than a millisecond. However, during that very brief time, it released as much energy as the sun emits in 30 years. This information comes from a study published in the journal Science on Thursday.

FRBs are very short bursts of bright radio waves that vanish quickly. This makes it hard to study them.

Radio telescopes, like the ASKAP array in Western Australia, have helped astronomers track fast cosmic bursts. Scientists studying space used a special device called ASKAP to find a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) in June 2022 and figure out where it came from.

“Dr(Study coauthor) said that we were able to find out exactly where the burst came from by using ASKAP’s group of (radio) dishes. ” Stuart Ryder, who is a scientist studying space at Macquarie University in Australia, said in a statement. Afterwards, we used a powerful telescope in Chile, called the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, to look for the galaxy where the signals came from. We found that this galaxy is very old and located at a greater distance compared to other sources of Fast Radio Bursts discovered so far. It is probably situated within a small group of merging galaxies.

The group of researchers found that the burst came from a couple of galaxies that are combining, interacting, and creating new stars. This discovery supports the idea that fast radio bursts may come from magnetars. Magnetars are really powerful things that form when stars explode.

Scientists think that fast radio bursts could help us find out how much stuff there is in the universe by measuring the matter that is missing between galaxies.

Ryan Shannon, a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, said that when we tally up all the regular stuff in the Universe (like atoms), we see that more than half of it is not where it should be. We believe that the matter that is missing could be in the empty areas between galaxies. However, it might be really hot and spread out, making it impossible to see with regular methods.

Currently, the ways we measure how much the universe weighs don’t match up, which means we might be missing some of the universe.

“According to Shannon, fast radio bursts can detect this charged material. ” Even in very empty space, they are able to detect all the electrons. This helps us determine the amount of matter between the galaxies.

The late Australian astronomer Jean-Pierre Macquart showed in 2020 how we can use fast radio bursts to find missing matter.

J-P found that the further a fast radio burst is, the more spread out gas it shows between the galaxies. Now, people refer to this as the Macquart relation,” Ryder said. Some recent bursts of radio waves were different than what scientists expected them to be.
Our measurements show that the Macquart relation is true for more than half of the Universe that we already know about.

Almost 50 quick radio bursts have been located to find where they came from, and about half of them were discovered using ASKAP.

Shannon stated that although the cause behind these powerful bursts of energy is still unknown, the paper confirms that fast radio bursts happen frequently in space. These bursts can help us detect matter in the areas between galaxies and gain a deeper understanding of the Universe’s structure.

Scientists who study space said they believe that new radio telescopes being built in South Africa and Australia will help them find many more fast radio bursts, which are bursts of energy from outer space, even farther away than before.

Shannon said it’s incredible how frequent FRBs are. This shows how good the field can be. You’re not only going to do this for a short time, but you can do it for a very long time. You can create a new map of the universe and use it to find answers to important questions about space.