Eight billion light years: this is the distance traveled by the radio signal originating farthest from Earth
Short, rapid bursts of radio waves reach Earth from distant galaxies, emitting as much energy in a single millisecond as the Sun produces over the course of several weeks.
Astronomers have now spotted the most remote fast radio burst (FRB) ever observed. Despite its incredibly short signal – lasting less than a millisecond – the ASKAP radio telescope in Australia managed to record this FRB as it passed by the Earth.
It took light eight billion years to reach Earth The European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) has managed to determine the origin of this distant FRB (called FRB 20220610A). It was tracked to a galaxy so distant that its light took eight billion years to reach us.
This FRB also stands out as one of the most energetic ever recorded. In a fraction of a second, it emitted an amount of energy equivalent to the entire output of our Sun over the course of 30 years.
“Using ASKAP's antenna array, we were able to precisely determine where the flash was coming from. We then used ESO's VLT in Chile to search for the source galaxy, finding that it is older and further away than any other FRB source found to date and probably within a small group of merging galaxies." said Stuart Ryder, an astronomer at Macquarie University in Australia and co-author of the study, in an official statement.
FRB to find hidden matter
The researchers behind the study point out that distant FRBs offer the possibility of assessing the hidden matter existing between galaxies, presenting a new approach to “weighing” the Universe.
This hypothesis was proven by the late Australian astronomer Jean-Pierre ('JP') Macquart in 2020.
“JP showed that the further away a fast radio burst is, the more diffuse gas it reveals between galaxies. This is now known as the Macquart relation. Some recent fast radio bursts appeared to break this relationship. Our measurements confirm that the Macquart relation extends beyond half of the known Universe,” Ryder explained.
Scientists hypothesize that the missing matter may be hiding in intergalactic space. However, it may be in such a dispersed and heated form that traditional observation techniques fail to detect it. This is why these FRBs are important, for evaluating space matter
However, fast radio bursts may be able to "sense" ionized material.
“Even in space that is almost perfectly empty, they can 'see' all the electrons, and this allows us to measure how much material is between galaxies,” said Ryan Shannon, a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
This new study confirms that fast radio bursts are common events in the Universe.
While scientists remain uncertain about the precise origin of these rapid flashes, the cause of their emission continues to be the subject of active scientific research and discussion.
A recent study published in October proposed that fast radio bursts (FRBs) could be triggered by “star shocks” on the surfaces of neutron stars, which are the remnants of colossal stars.
The next advanced astronomical facilities, under construction in South Africa and Australia, more refined than the current ones, should help understand the origin of FRBs.
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The article Eight billion light years: this is the distance traveled by the radio signal originating farthest from Earth comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/otto-miliardi-di-anni-luce-ecco-la-distanza-percorsa-dal-segnale-radio-originato-il-piu-lontano-dalla-terra/ on Fri, 20 Oct 2023 18:00:11 +0000.