An international team of scientists has successfully detected and pinpointed the most distant Fast Radio Burst (FRB) ever recorded: FRB 20240304B. This significant discovery, made on March 4, 2024, utilized the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa and pushes the frontiers of our understanding of the early cosmos.
The burst's origin has been traced to a galaxy at a redshift of 2.148, which corresponds to approximately 3 billion years after the Big Bang. This places the event within the "cosmic noon" era, a pivotal period characterized by intense star formation in the universe. The detection of FRB 20240304B highlights the advanced capabilities of modern astronomical instruments, with the MeerKAT telescope's array of 64 dishes initially capturing the fleeting millisecond-duration radio signal. Crucial follow-up observations using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were instrumental in precisely locating the host galaxy.
The host galaxy is described as a low-mass, actively star-forming entity, possessing a stellar mass of approximately 10 million solar masses and a star formation rate of 0.2 solar masses per year. The extreme distance of FRB 20240304B effectively doubles the redshift reach for localized FRBs, enabling astronomers to probe the distribution of ionized baryons across a vast expanse of cosmic history, covering about 80% of the universe's evolution. Previously, localized FRBs had only provided insights into roughly half of cosmic time.
This discovery offers a unique opportunity to study galaxies during their formative "cosmic noon" phase, providing invaluable insights into galaxy formation processes and the distribution of matter in the nascent universe. Fast Radio Bursts, characterized by their intense, millisecond-duration radio emissions, are theorized to originate from phenomena such as young magnetars. The dispersion measure of FRB 20240304B, calculated at approximately 2,330 pc cm⁻³, further corroborates its immense distance.
The successful detection and localization of FRB 20240304B underscore the synergy between ground-based and space-based observatories. The MeerKAT telescope's sensitivity to transient signals, combined with the JWST's detailed observational capabilities, is opening new avenues in the quest to understand the universe's evolution. Continued analysis of FRB 20240304B is expected to shed further light on the conditions and processes that shaped the cosmos during its most dynamic early epochs.