Astronomers Detect Brightest, Most Distant Fast Radio Burst From 8 Billion Years Ago

Discovery of FRB 20220610A challenges previous theories of Fast Radio Burst origins, while promising the potential to measure the Universe's hidden matter.

An international team of astronomers has detected the brightest and most distant Fast Radio Burst (FRB) to date, which took about eight billion years to reach Earth. The burst has been named FRB 20220610A.
The FRB detected, released the equivalent of our Sun's total emission over 30 years in a tiny fraction of a second. This discovery exceeds previous models by a factor of 3.5 and challenges current theories of FRB origins.
FRB 20220610A was discovered in June last year by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and then its source galaxy was located using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.
FRBs can be used to measure the 'missing' matter in the universe, offering a new way to estimate the universe's mass. Fast radio bursts sense ionized matter allowing the measurement of material between galaxies.
More advanced radio telescopes, soon to be launched, are expected to detect even older and more distant bursts, making it possible to detect matter between galaxies and better understand the structure of the Universe—despite not fully understanding the causes of these bursts.