On 4 March 2024, the MeerTRAP project recorded an extremely brief radio burst, named FRB 20240304B, with the MeerKAT radio telescope. The signal suggested an exceptional distance, but a radio measurement alone was not enough to confirm precisely where and when the event had occurred in cosmic history. very different people can do together.
MeerKAT detects the lightning, Webb tracks the address.
A fast radio burst, or FRB, lasts for a few milliseconds. MeerKAT detected and located it in the sky. The region was known, but the corresponding galaxy remained too faint to be identified with the available observations from the ground. Webb's NIRCam infrared camera spotted a small galaxy in the correct position; its NIRSpec spectrograph then measured a redshift of 2.148. The first time we saw the Big Bang, we were in the age of the universe.
In the Webb photograph, the cross marks the calculated position of the burst. It is not a picture of the radio flash: Webb took the galaxy, not the pulse of 2024. This distinction avoids confusing radio detection in time with an object visible in a later infrared image.
Why this galaxy surprises scientists
The host galaxy is a small dwarf galaxy where stars are forming. According to the team cited by NASA, it is about a thousand times less massive than expected from the already known FRB hosts. This young environment makes it less likely, in this particular case, a scenario that would take billions of years to bring two neutron stars closer together until they merge. It is compatible with the idea of a magnetar, a star with a The first is that the electron is a highly magnetized neutron originating from a massive star, but it is not a definitive proof of the mechanism of all FRBs.
A collaboration between radio astronomy and space observation
The scientific interest goes beyond the record distance. Radio waves travel through the diffuse matter between the source and us; their signal retains a trace of that path. The images and Webb's spectrum, in turn, provide information about the origin galaxy. By combining these data, astronomers can study both the medium where the burst originated and some of the intergalactic matter it traveled through.
The contribution of MeerKAT also gives this discovery a concrete African dimension: the radio telescope is in South Africa. The prudent conclusion is that a ground instrument and a space observatory complement each other; neither alone would have provided the same picture of FRB 20240304B.