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NASA Space

Hubble Finds Weird Home of Farthest Fast Radio Burst (nasa.gov) 27

Posted by msmash from the unravelling-mysteries dept.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found a rare event in an oddball place. NASA reports: It's called a fast radio burst (FRB), a fleeting blast of energy that can -- for a few milliseconds -- outshine an entire galaxy. Hundreds of FRBs have been detected over the past few years. They pop off all over the sky like camera flashes at a stadium event, but the sources behind these intense bursts of radiation remain uncertain. This new FRB is particularly weird because it erupted halfway across the universe, making it the farthest and most powerful example detected to date.

And if that's not strange enough, it just got weirder based on the follow-up Hubble observations made after its discovery. The FRB flashed in what seems like an unlikely place: a collection of galaxies that existed when the universe was only 5 billion years old. The large majority of previous FRBs have been found in isolated galaxies. FRB 20220610A was first detected on June 10, 2022, by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile confirmed that the FRB came from a distant place. The FRB was four times more energetic than closer FRBs.

"It required Hubble's keen sharpness and sensitivity to pinpoint exactly where the FRB came from," said lead author Alexa Gordon of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. "Without Hubble's imaging, it would still remain a mystery as to whether this was originating from one monolithic galaxy or from some type of interacting system. It's these types of environments -- these weird ones -- that are driving us toward better understanding the mystery of FRBs." Hubble's crisp images suggest this FRB originated in an environment where there may be as many as seven galaxies on a possible path to merging, which would also be very significant, researchers say.
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Hubble Finds Weird Home of Farthest Fast Radio Burst

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  • ...Webb it! Let the Webb scope have a look. Then again, Webb has to be careful with targeting angle due to meteor impact risk. They try to keep the mirrors facing at right angles to the likely meteor paths. As the Earth moves around the sun, different angles move into the safe aim.

    • It might be a while. Both Hubble and JWST award time on a yearly basis so the next opportunity for someone could be next year.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        This is a time-sensitive observation, as whatever is causing these bursts may fade quick.

        They should leave a few time windows for surprise observations. If no surprises come, then grab the next one in the queue.

        • > whatever is causing these bursts may fade quick.

          Clarification: the signature or aftermath may fade quick, such as ionized gas after-glows.

          • FRB sources are compact. None of our telescopes have a resolution to see anything particularly interesting in a galaxy 9 billion light years away of that size. Any kind of afterglow on a stellar scale would just drown in the galaxy light.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Tablizer ( 95088 )

              Since nobody knows the actual cause, those are merely assumptions. Likely assumptions, I will grant, but big discoveries often come from things that don't behave as estimated.

        • This is a time-sensitive observation, as whatever is causing these bursts may fade quick.

          The fading is on the timescale of minutes to hours. Longer-lived objects like GRBs do have after afterglows into the days and weeks - but it took about 30 years to get quick enough responses to them, and another 25 years later, we're still debating exactly what their sources are.

          They should leave a few time windows for surprise observations.

          They do. Depending on observatory, it has a name like "Target Of Opportunity" (T

        • They should leave a few time windows for surprise observations. If no surprises come, then grab the next one in the queue.

          For other telescopes there might be more options for quick observations; however, JWST is an infrared telescope and being at Lagrange 2, it has a smaller viewing area and spectrum.

  • In a stunning development, scientists were actually able to decode a brief message that was found to be encoded in the signal:

    I ordered RADIO SILENCE!! Do you want the entire Cyborg fleet down here on our <EOT>

  • I am not saying it was aliens . . . But it was aliens

  • It's nothing, just the collapsing of the universe going on. Don't need to worry, it will be quick.

  • " a collection of galaxies that existed when the universe was only 5 billion years old."
    So, a collection of galaxies from a long time ago and far, far away? Poor Alderaan...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      That means we may be able to actually observe the hypothetical Star Wars galaxy in action, since the light reaching us is time-delayed by distance. If it happened in the future far far away, we'd have no shot, at least not in a human life-time.

    • When the universe was 5 billion years old, the amount of "metals" (anything heavier than helium) was about 1/3 of the amount around today (and half what was around when Earth formed. So it was probably a lonely planet.

      OTOH, I don't remember if there were any other planets in the fictional Alderaan system. The name would suggest not.

  • Everyone knows today that the BigBang never occur, but it was a multiple bang, maybe these FRB are just that, where the cords colide and make a new Bang.

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