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4w ago

Astronomers Localize Most Distant Fast Radio Burst to Tiny Star‑Forming Galaxy

Published Thursday, the Science paper shows a millisecond radio flash from redshift ≈2.148 can map otherwise-invisible intergalactic gas.

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The discovery also allowed scientists to investigate the otherwise invisible material between Earth and the distant burst. (Photo: Nasa)
Dozens of telescopes with a pink sunset in the background.
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Overview

  • The burst FRB 20240304B was first detected by the MeerTRAP system on the MeerKAT radio telescope in March 2024 and its host identification and analysis were published Thursday in Science.
  • NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope used NIRCam imaging and NIRSpec spectroscopy to find the faint host and measure a redshift of about 2.148, placing the source roughly 10 billion light‑years away.
  • The host is an unexpectedly small, metal‑poor dwarf galaxy undergoing active star formation, a combination that supports young magnetars as at least one possible FRB progenitor.
  • FRB 20240304B showed a very high dispersion measure (≈2,400), which signals a long path through free electrons and lets astronomers probe intergalactic gas and tentative intervening structures reported by the team.
  • The team plans coordinated searches using MeerKAT with triggered JWST follow‑ups and looks to future SKA observations to find more distant FRBs and map the universe’s missing baryons.