Long ago, in the distant past of the universe, a fleeting radio burst emanated from a galaxy that had not yet finished forming its stars. The signal lasted for a fraction of a millisecond, but it traveled across the cosmos until astronomers on Earth detected it 10 billion years later.
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The surprise was not only in its record size, but also in the fact that its origin appeared to be much younger and more recent than researchers had expected, which reopens the question of the cosmic machine capable of producing these mysterious explosions.
But knowing its exact location was not enough to determine the distance to it, as the most powerful ground-based observatories were unable to see the galaxy that emitted it, until scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope.
These phenomena are known as "fast radio bursts" and were first discovered in 2007. They are very short flashes, the source of most of which is still unknown, and some of which never recur.
A small galaxy holds a big surprise
The Web's near-infrared camera was able to reveal a faint dwarf galaxy at the signal location, and it appeared as if we were seeing it as it was when the universe was less than 3 billion years old, in an era when the birth of stars and galaxies flourished. Stranger still, the galaxy's mass is about a thousand times less than what the team expected.
The rate at which stars are forming in the galaxy suggests that most of its stars may have been born in just 30 million years. University of Sydney astrophysicist and lead researcher Manisha Kaleep said they expected a large, star-filled galaxy, but instead found a small, dwarf galaxy still actively forming.
This young environment puts a common explanation to the test: the merger of two neutron stars usually takes a long time after their birth, while a highly magnetic neutron star, known as a magnetar, can produce a burst at a relatively early age. The study favors the latter possibility for this event, without definitively explaining the origin of all radio bursts.
A flash that maps the hidden universe
The signal has another value beyond identifying its source; during its journey, it carried traces of the matter it passed through, like a lamp illuminating a hidden network between galaxies. Scientists were able to discern the signature of a previously unknown galaxy cluster, in addition to the trace of the Virgo Cluster, which is relatively close to Earth.
Javier Prochasca, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, likened the radio burst to a cosmic lamp that reveals what gets in its way. Electrons scattered throughout space delay some radio frequencies more than others, allowing for the estimation of matter that cannot be seen directly.
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