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Currently Playing: JWST detects MOST distant FRB origin! #Shorts

Fast Radio Bursts: These are another as yet unexplained observation of the Universe, but thanks to JWST this month we’ve gotten a step closer to understanding what they are. So FRBs were first spotted in 2007, as incredibly bright, very short millisecond flashes of radio waves. They give off more energy in that tiny short burst than the Sun does in an entire day. Now back in March 2024, the MeerTRAP team using the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa detected a FRB dubbed 20240304B. And the data from this burst suggested that it was extremely distant, possibly the most distant one seen to date. Because although they knew the direction the FRB was coming from very precisely, the world’s largest ground-based telescopes could not see any galaxy at that spot in the sky, suggesting it was incredibly far away. So they applied to use the JWST to try and spot the galaxy this FRB was coming from, and found a galaxy there 10.6 billion light years away. Because light takes time to get to us we’re seeing that galaxy as it was when the Universe was just 3 billion years old, when star formation was at its peak. This is a big deal, because the majority of fast radio bursts are a lot closer to us, so occurred a lot later in the Universe’s history. So, it means this FRB is most likely not from a kilonovae, where two neutron stars collide, because the time it takes for them to inspiral together is thought to be billions of years, so we think they tend to happen in older galaxies. Whereas this galaxy is young, not very big, but forming lots of new stars. So if one of those stars has died, gone supernova and produced a magnetar, it could have produced this FRB. But perhaps our understanding of the time taken for a kilonovae to happen is wrong, and this could be a kilonova FRB, we just don’t know. The hope is that the MEERkat telescope will detect more of these distant FRBs, so we can get more of a census on the properties of the galaxies they’re found in, and hopefully learn more about what’s actually producing these incredibly high energy bursts of radio light. Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: martino.freelance@gmail.com Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com