Distant Origin

NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI); Science: Manisha Caleb (SIfA) Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope were able to study the host galaxy of the most distant known fast radio burst (FRB). Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are notoriously difficult to study. They are bright radio chirps that only last just milliseconds. When FRBs were first observed, it was difficult to distinguish them from terrestrial noise sources. As we learned out to distinguish real FRBs from noise, it became clear that most of them originate from other galaxies. This means they must be caused by a powerful and fast-acting astrophysical process. Given their intensity and duration, the likely causes of FRBs are either the merging of neutron stars as they become a black hole or some kind of flare-like event on the surface of a magnetar. More exotic answers such as the collapse of hypothetical dark-matter stars have been proposed as well. But with only the radio bursts to go by, a specific origin is hard…