press release
October 19, 2023
An international team has discovered a distant burst of cosmic radio waves that lasted less than a millisecond. This “fast radio burst” (FRB) is the most distant ever recorded. Its source was located using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in a galaxy so distant that its light took eight billion years to reach us. The radio burst is also one of the most energetic ever observed; in a tiny fraction of a second, it released an amount of energy equivalent to 30 years of our Sun’s total emissions.
The discovery of the outbreak, called FRB 20220610A, was made in June last year. ASKAustralian made radio telescope (1) and exceeded the team’s previous distance record by 50 percent.
“With the ASKThanks to the antenna field, we were able to determine exactly where the eruption came from.” says Stuart Ryder, an astronomer at Macquarie University in Australia and one of the lead authors of the study published today in the journal Science study published.We then have (with the ALV ESO) searched for the source galaxy in Chile (2) and found that it is older and more distant than any other radio burst source found to date, and is likely located in a small group of merging galaxies..”
The discovery confirms that fast radio bursts can be used to measure the “missing” matter between galaxies, offering a new way to “weigh” the universe.
Current methods for estimating the mass of the universe provide contradictory answers and call into question the standard model of cosmology.When we count the amount of normal matter in the universe – the atoms that make us all up – we find that it is missing more than half of what should be there today.” says Ryan Shannon, a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, who also led the study.We suspect that the missing matter is hidden in the space between galaxies, but it may be so hot and diffuse that it cannot be seen with current techniques.“
“Fast radio flashes detect this ionized material. Even in almost completely empty space, they can see all the electrons, allowing us to measure how much matter lies between galaxies.Shannon explains.
Detecting fast and distant radio bursts is crucial to accurately measuring the missing matter in the universe, as demonstrated by the late Australian astronomer Jean-Pierre (JP) Macquart in 2020.JP showed that the farther away a fast radio burst is, the more diffuse gas he can detect between galaxies. This is now called the Macquart relation. Some recent fast radio bursts appear to break this relation. Our measurements confirm that the Macquart relation extends beyond half of the known universe.“, Ryder explains.
“While we still don’t know what causes these massive bursts of energy, the study confirms that fast radio bursts are common events in the cosmos and that we can use them to detect matter between galaxies and better understand the structure of the universe.” adds Shannon.
The result represents the limit of what can be achieved with telescopes today, although astronomers will soon have the means to detect even older and more distant bursts, determine their source galaxies and measure the missing matter in the universe. The International Square Kilometer Observatory is currently building two radio telescopes in South Africa and Australia that can detect thousands of fast radio bursts, including very distant radio bursts that current facilities cannot see. Extremely large telescope ESO, a 39-metre telescope under construction in the Atacama Desert in Chile, will be one of the few telescopes capable of studying explosion-source galaxies even more distant than FRB 20220610A.
Endnotes
(1) The ASKAP telescope belongs to CSIROAustralia’s national science agency, and is managed by it on Wajarri Yamaji Lands in Western Australia.
(2) The team used data obtained with the FOcal Reducer and the Low Dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2), X shooter and high-acuity wide-field K-band imager (HAWK-I) were collected at the ESO VLT. Data from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, USA, were also used in the study.
More information
This research was presented in a paper titled “A Fast Radio Burst Probes the Universe at Redshift 1,” published in Science will appear.
The team consists of SD Ryder (School of Mathematics and Science, Macquarie University, Australia (SMPS); Astrophysics and Space Technology Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia (ASTRC)), KW Bannister (Australian National Telescope Facility, Science and Industrial Research, Space and Astronomy Organisation, Australia (CSIRO)), S. Bhandari (Netherlands Institute for Radio Telescope, Netherlands; Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe, Netherlands), AT Deller (Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia (CAS)), RD Ekers (CSIRO; International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, Curtin University, Australia (ICRAR)), M. Glowacki (ICRAR), AC Gordon (Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Research and Astrophysics, Northwestern University, USA (CIERA)), K. Gourdji (CAS), CW James (ICRAR), CD Kilpatrick (CIERA; Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, USA), W. Lu (Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, USA; Theoretical Astrophysics Center, University of California, Berkeley, USA), L. Marnoch (SMPS; ASTRC; CSIRO; Australian Research Council Center for Comprehensive Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions, Australia), VA Moss (CSIRO), JX Prochaska (Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA (Santa Cruz Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, Japan), H. Qiu (SKA Observatory, Jodrell Bank, UK), EM Sadler (Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, University of Sydney, Australia; CSIRO), S. Simha (Santa Cruz), MW Sammons (ICRAR), DR Scott (ICRAR), N. Tejos (Department of Physics, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile) and RM Shannon (CAS).
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists from around the world to unlock the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories that astronomers use to answer exciting questions and inspire fascination with astronomy, and we promote international collaboration in astronomy. Founded in 1962 as an intergovernmental organisation, ESO is led by 16 Member States (Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, France, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the United Kingdom) and the Host Country Chile and Australia as strategic partners. ESO Headquarters and its Visitor Centre and Planetarium, ESO Supernova, are located near Munich in Germany, while the Atacama Desert in Chile, a wonderland offering unique conditions for observing the skies, is home to our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At the Paranal site, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its associated Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as survey telescopes such as VUE. Also at Paranal, ESO will operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. In collaboration with international partners, ESO operates APEX and ALMA, two millimetre and submillimetre observing facilities on Chajnantor. On Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s largest eye in the sky”: ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile, we support our activities in the country and collaborate with Chilean partners and society.
The translations of ESO press releases into English are a service of the ESO Science Outreach Network (ESON), an international astronomy outreach network in which scientists and science communicators from all ESO Member Countries (and some other countries) are represented. It is the German node of the network. House of Astronomy in Heidelberg.
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Contact details
Stuart Ryder
Adjunct Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University
Sydney, Australia
Tel.: +61 419 970834
E-mail: Stuart.Ryder@mq.edu.au
Ryan Shannon
Associate Professor, Swinburne University
Hawthorn, Australia
Tel: +61 3 9214 5205
E-mail: rshannon@swin.edu.au
Barbara Ferreira
ESO Media Manager
Garching near Munich, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6670
Mobile: +49 151 241 664 00
E-mail: press@eso.org
Markus Nielbock (press contact Germany)
ESO Science Outreach Network and House of Astronomy
Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: +49 6221 528-134
E-mail: eson-germany@eso.org
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This is a translation of ESO press release eso2317.