Webb Traces 10-Billion-Year-Old Deep Space Signal To Its Source

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (with initial data captured by South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope) have localized the most distant fast radio burst ever recorded: a signal that traveled across space for more than 10 billion years before reaching us.

The powerful, millisecond-long pulse of radio waves (designated FRB 20240304B) originated when the universe was only about three billion years old and has traveled through roughly 80% of cosmic history, which is double the distance record of any previously identified fast radio burst.

These radio bursts emit as much energy in a fraction of a second as our Sun generates over months or years, yet their fundamental physical drivers have remained one of astrophysics' greatest mysteries since being discovered in 2007. Because FRBs flash so briefly and usually vanish without repeating, pinning down their exact origins requires identifying the home galaxy from which they burst.

When the...

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