How long is 8 billion years exactly? Just a little less than twice the Earth’s age.
An FRB, a fast radio burst, that was picked up by a radio telescope in Australia initially baffled scientists when they found it was sent by something that happened in a distant galaxy almost 8 billion years ago. This FRB was picked up on June 10, 2022, and was recently revealed, almost a year later, that this particular FRB was more powerful and came from much further away than ever before recorded.
An FRB is a little-understood phenomenon initially discovered in 2007 and is one of astronomy’s greatest mysteries. While some theories have been thrown out about FRBs, such as them being signs of alien life, many scientists believe the main cause to be distant dead stars known as magnetars.
This particular FRB is claimed to have been a miracle to catch as it happened for about one millisecond and many astrophysicists claim they are lucky to have caught such a unique FRB. It easily beat the previous record holder, which was about 5 billion years, and took its place as the furthest light years away. The pulse of it was so powerful that it mimicked as much energy the sun releases in 30 years in just one millisecond. To find the location of the radio burst, researchers turned to a telescope in Chile. The Very Large Telescope in Chile would help the researcher pinpoint the location of the radio burst to a particular clumpy galaxy that may have been merging with other galaxies creating a magnetar as the source. In conclusion, scientists deemed that their best hunch was that the radio signal originated from a merging of multiple galaxies sending an FRB reaching about 8 billion years.
Although scientists aim to understand FRB’s such as this one better, they also hope that a better understanding would help shed light on some more of the galaxy’s mysteries.
