JWST traces record fast radio burst to a small, star-forming galaxy
Astronomers used South Africa’s MeerKAT array and the James Webb Space Telescope to trace FRB 20240304B to a galaxy seen as it was about 3 billion years after the Big Bang. The burst travelled for more than 10 billion years to reach Earth, more than doubling the previous distance record for a fast radio burst with an identified host galaxy.
Bottom line — The team has JWST time over the next three years to follow up other distant bursts and study matter between galaxies.
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Themiya Nanayakkara and Manisha Caleb, writing in The Conversation, say the galaxy is about 10 million solar masses, metal-poor and actively forming stars.
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Ground-based observations could not detect the faint host; JWST’s infrared camera found it, and its spectrum established the galaxy’s distance, according to Live Science.
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The host’s young, star-forming environment is consistent with some fast radio bursts coming from magnetars, but the researchers say bursts may have different origins, according to Space.com.
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Scientific American reports the burst’s dispersion can help map otherwise hard-to-detect matter between galaxies across about 80% of cosmic history.
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The team’s study was published in Science.