INBOX ASTRONOMY
Webb Measures Distance to Farthest Fast Radio Burst, Suggesting Origin
Release date: Thursday, October 8, 2026 2:00:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Record breaker dates back to just 3 billion years after the big bang.
What mysterious phenomenon is capable of creating a millisecond-long blast of radio waves so powerful that we can detect it from billions of light-years away? The origin of such events, known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), remains uncertain.
A recently discovered FRB contains a clue. The most distant one found to date, its host galaxy proved surprisingly small and young. This suggests that there is little delay between when galaxies form stars and when they become capable of generating FRBs. This indicates FRBs likely are caused by young neutron stars known as magnetars. Only the James Webb Space Telescope was able to detect and characterize the host galaxy, determining both its distance and its size.
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