The radio wave burst FRB 2022610A flashes from a place described by scientists as “incredible.”
According to Sci-News, the “home” of the FRB 2022610A radio burst is a cluster of 7 galaxies that existed in a region of space when the universe was just 5 billion years old.
This is an unprecedented event, as previous radio bursts have only been found from isolated galaxies.
The distant point of light is the galaxy cluster emitting the unusual radio burst – (Photo: NASA/ESA).
Additionally, such an ancient radio burst is a “golden discovery.” Traveling over billions of light-years, it has arrived on Earth to reveal a violent event that occurred more than 8 billion years ago.
This signal was first detected by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope, located in the Western Australian desert. Subsequently, the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) confirmed that it must be from a very distant location.
Remarkably, it has four times the energy compared to previously detected bursts that are closer to Earth.
According to Dr. Alexa Gordon from Northwestern University (USA) – the lead author of the research team, they enlisted the help of the Hubble Space Telescope to “look” into this deep space region.
The seven ancient galaxies were astonishingly revealed. Moreover, Hubble’s observations provided a spectacular view of the types of environments that could lead to these mysterious events.
While the ultimate question of where the radio burst originates remains unanswered, this discovery has still brought back important clues.
The origin of this type of rapid, powerful, explosive signal remains a topic of debate. Leading hypotheses include black hole mergers, neutron star mergers, or the explosion of an extremely powerful neutron star.
Additionally, many also suspect that some radio bursts may come from an extraterrestrial civilization.
