Astronomers have detected an intense flash of radio waves coming from what looks like a merger of galaxies dating to about 8 billion years ago - the oldest-known instance of a phenomenon called a fast radio burst that continues to defy explanation.
This artist's impression, not to scale, illustrates the path of a fast radio burst from the distant galaxy where it originated all the way to Earth, in one of the Milky Way galaxy's spiral arms, in this handout picture obtained on October 20, 2023. ESO/M.
"The radio waves in FRBs are similar to those used in microwave ovens. The amount of energy in this FRB is the equivalent to microwaving a bowl of popcorn twice the size of the sun," said astronomer Ryan Shannon of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, co-leader of the study published this week in the journal
"There are more energetic events in the universe, associated with stellar explosions or a black hole shredding a star apart. But FRBs are unique in that they produce all their energy in radio waves, with nothing seen in other bands - optical light or X-rays for example - and that the signals are so short," Shannon added.
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