Mysterious radio burst sets cosmic record

Astronomers detected FRB 20240304B, a fast radio burst that traveled more than 10 billion years to reach Earth, breaking the prior distance record and originating from a time when the universe was about 3 billion years old. Researchers used South Africa's MeerKAT telescope to catch the signal and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to pinpoint its surprisingly small, metal-poor host galaxy, which was undergoing intense star formation.

Published Thursday in Science, the findings support magnetars, highly magnetized neutron stars formed from stellar explosions, as a likely source of at least some fast radio bursts, given the host galaxy's active environment. Researchers say the burst also offers clues about intergalactic matter and hope future detections will probe even earlier cosmic eras.

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