Astronomers have found the brightest Fast Radio Burst (FRB) ever seen. An international team, including researchers from the University of Toronto, traced its origin to a nearby galaxy. This discovery used a network of radio telescopes.
FRBs are powerful flashes of radio energy from space. Scientists believe extreme events create them, but the exact cause is still unknown. Pinpointing their source could help scientists understand where they come from.
Pinpointing the Burst
The Canadian Hydrogen-Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) has found thousands of these bursts since 2018. But finding their exact location has been hard.
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Start Your News DetoxThe new signal, called FRB 20250316A and nicknamed RBFLOAT, was located very precisely. This was done using the CHIME/FRB Outrigger array. These smaller CHIME instruments are in British Columbia, Northern California, and West Virginia. They work together using a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). This combines signals from far-apart telescopes to find an object's position with great accuracy.
Mattias Lazda, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto, said they were lucky to find the exact spot. He noted that a power outage at one telescope site happened hours after the detection. If the burst had happened later, they would have missed it.
A Powerful Burst from a Nearby Galaxy
Fast radio bursts are very intense radio sources, but they only last a short time. Each burst typically shines brighter than all other radio signals in its galaxy for a few milliseconds to a few seconds. RBFLOAT, found on March 16, 2025, lasted about one-fifth of a second.
Kiyoshi Masui, an associate professor of physics at MIT, said this FRB is "just in our neighborhood." This allows for detailed study of a normal FRB.
The burst seemed very bright because its source is relatively close to Earth. It came from near the outer part of the galaxy NGC 4141. This galaxy is about 130 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. Researchers narrowed the signal's origin to an area only 45 light-years across. This is smaller than a typical star cluster. It's like spotting a guitar pick from 1,000 kilometers away.
Amanda Cook, a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University, led the paper describing RBFLOAT. She said the discovery was exciting because it happened right after all three outriggers were online. The team quickly started working on the research to get follow-up observations.
JWST Reveals a Faint Infrared Signal
The precise location from the CHIME/FRB Outrigger array allowed the team to use the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). They found a faint infrared signal at the same spot where RBFLOAT came from. This was unexpected.
Researchers are still trying to understand what this signal means. It could be from a red giant star, or it might be a fading light echo from the burst itself.
Peter Blanchard, a Harvard postdoctoral fellow, led the paper on the JWST observation. He said JWST's high resolution helps them see individual stars around an FRB for the first time. This could help identify the types of stars that create such powerful bursts.
A Burst That Challenges Theories
This event is the brightest FRB CHIME has ever found. However, astronomers have not seen any repeat bursts from the same source. Scientists looked at hundreds of hours of CHIME data over more than six years but found no other signals.
Cook noted that this burst does not seem to repeat, unlike most well-studied FRBs. This challenges the idea that all FRBs repeat. It suggests that some FRBs might have more "explosive" origins.
Two scientific papers about this discovery were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. One paper describes the radio detection and location of the burst. The other reports the JWST infrared observations. These studies offer new insights into fast radio bursts. They suggest FRBs could become useful tools for studying the universe, rather than just mysterious cosmic events.
Deep Dive & References
- The brightest CHIME/FRB localized to date: FRB 20250316A - The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2024
- A faint infrared counterpart to FRB 20250316A with JWST - The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2024
