Astronomy | The radio burst broke the distance record – the origin was eight billion years away

Astronomers have detected the most distant fast radio burst, which had taken eight billion years to reach Earth. We will tell you about it Science– science magazine and reported on it, among other things CNN news channel. An international group of astronomers participated in the research.

The cosmic radio burst, called FRB 20220610A, lasted less than a millisecond, but released the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) by the amount corresponding to the sun’s 30-year total radiation.

The observation was made with the Askap radio telescope located in Australia, which includes a total of 36 antennas.

I’m noticed such bursts are called fast radio bursts. They are high-energy signals generated by a very powerful object.

The origin of the burst is one of the lead authors of the study by Stuart Ryder included in a small group of merging galaxies. According to CNN, there are two or three galaxies in the group. Radio bursts can be used to obtain information to estimate the mass of the universe.

“Fast radio bursts sense this ionized matter. Even in almost completely empty space, they ‘see’ all the electrons, and it allows us to measure how much matter is between the galaxies,” said a professor at Swinburne University of Technology who was involved in the study. Ryan Shannon in the ESO bulletin.

In total the origin of about 50 fast radio bursts has been located. Scientists hope that with the help of radio telescopes under construction, more bursts can be found.

For example, according to ESO, construction is underway in the Atacama desert in Chile “Very Large Telescope”whose diameter will eventually be 39 meters.

“It is one of the few telescopes that can study the source galaxies of bursts that are more distant than FRB 20220610A,” says the ESO press release.

Correction 22.10. 2:58 p.m.: Contrary to what was said earlier in the story, 39 meters is the diameter of the “Very Large Telescope”, not the length.