The burst's host galaxy is more than halfway across the observable universe and up to 100 times fainter than other host galaxies.
Astronomers have traced a fast radio burst (FRB) back to its origin, and what they've found is unlike any other FRB host previously discovered. The signal appears to have come from a tiny dwarf galaxy more than halfway across the observable universe, making it at least 46 billion light-years from Earth. This incredible distance and the galaxy's small but mighty stature bring researchers a little closer to understanding how fRBs come to fruition.
FRBs are brief but highly intense bursts of energy detected in radio-wave frequencies. Though short-lived, these electromagnetic eruptions are often powerful enough to outshine entire galaxies. This alone is strange enough to warrant investigation, but FRBs might also have something to teach astronomers about the evolution of the universe and the properties of the intergalactic medium, by which they're sometimes distorted as they travel. They also lead astronomers to "new" host galaxies, as FRB 20190208A has done.
An international team of astronomers first detected FRB 20190208A in February 2019. Using radio telescopes, the team observed the burst for just under 66 hours, then caught it again in February 2021 and August 2023. This meant FRB 20190208A was a repeating FRB, the likes of which were only discovered half a decade ago.
FRB 20190208A's persistent pops allowed the astronomers to track down its origin, and then use optical telescopes to scope out the area. At first, they struggled to find a galaxy from which the burst might have originated. Then, on closer examination, they found a "faint smudge" in deep space. The smudge was a small and faint dwarf galaxy, and while the team hasn't yet nailed down its exact distance from Earth, they estimate that it sits at least halfway across the observable universe. That would make the host galaxy 46 billion light-years from Earth at minimum, though that doesn't mean FRB 20190208A traveled for so long; accounting for the expansion of the universe, the astronomers think the burst traveled for some 7 billion years.
Though the exact cause of FRBs has been difficult to nab, scientists think they're formed by a type of neutron star called a magnetar, whose powerful magnetic field snaps in a sudden burst of energy. Strangely, repeating FRBs like FRB 20190208A seem to be more strongly associated with dwarf galaxies than with larger galaxies, suggesting that the former provide an optimal environment for magnetars and potentially other FRB sources that astronomers haven't yet tracked down.
"Finding repeating FRB sources in dwarf galaxies thus potentially links these repeating FRB sources with massive star progenitors," Danté Hewitt, a radio astronomer involved in the research, told ScienceAlert. "It's a little poetic. When the most massive stars die, they unleash some of the most energetic explosions in the universe; and then maybe, the remnants of those explosions continue to scream into the void, repeatedly producing FRBs."
Website: International Conference on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.
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