Astronomers detect 8 billion-year-old radio waves in cosmic explosion

Using a source detected by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), An international team of astronomers has detected the most distant fast radio wave burst (FRB) ever observed. A very short signal of one millisecond, which took 8 billion years to reach us, released an energy equivalent to the energy emitted by the Sun in 30 years.

The signal identified in the study as FRB 20220610A refers to the merging cluster of two or three galaxies. According to the researchers, this fast radio burst has the potential to assess the amount of hidden matter that exists between galaxies and could practically offer a new way to ‘weigh’ the Universe.

The approach is based on a theory presented in 2020 by Australian astronomer Jean-Pierre “JP” Macquart. He showed that the further away an FRB is, the more dispersed gas it can release between galaxies. This principle, known as “Macquart’s theorem”, means: The further away the FRB’s source was, the more material it found, This could be a clue to estimating the total mass of the Universe.

Radio burst searching for hidden matter in the universe

self explanatory, The term “fast radio bursts” are short, powerful pulses of radio waves from extragalactic sources. Although they remain a mystery because their origins are unknown, the current FRB may shed some light on this traditionally obscure area.

FRB 20220610A was detected by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), a set of radio telescopes based in Western Australia.

Stuart Ryder, lead author of the study, explained in a statement that ASKAP’s various antennas allowed it to accurately determine the origin of the radio source. “We then used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to search for the source galaxy. discovering that it is older and more distant than any other FRB source found to date“, concluded the Macquarie University astronomer.

‘Sensing’ the universe’s ionized matter

Based on the findings of JP Macquart, Could cover more than half of the universe Based on current measurements, scientists suggest that the missing matter, which has not been detected or observed to date, may be “hidden” in intergalactic space.

The bad news is that it may be too diffuse and in a feverish form for current observation techniques to detect it.

In the absence of light, FRBs can perform this task because they can “sense” ionized matter. “Even in almost completely empty space, they can ‘see’ all the electrons, allowing us to measure how much matter there is between galaxies,” concludes co-author Ryan Shannon, a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

Follow the latest developments in science and astronomy at TecMundo. If you wish, take the opportunity to read about how white dwarfs can help in the search for dark matter in the universe.