More distant and extreme fast radio bursts promise to reveal further secrets about the universe, so astronomers are on the hunt. In 2020, analysis of fast radio bursts revealed that the cosmic web actually contains more than half of the normal matter in the universe-which astronomers had previously thought was "missing." The degree to which bursts slow down correlates with the distance they have traveled. (This is ordinary matter, the same kind that makes up stars, planets and humans, not the invisible "dark matter" that also lurks throughout the universe.) This matter is very hot, diffuse gas and almost invisible, but it subtly slows down fast radio bursts as they pass through it. The second reason is that the bursts provide a new tool to study other aspects of the cosmos.įast radio bursts let us study the "cosmic web" of matter floating in the space between galaxies. The bursts are a trillion times more energetic than the things that look most like them: rotating neutron stars called pulsars, in our own galaxy. The first is that their cause is unknown. In new research published in Science, we have found the most distant fast radio burst ever detected: an 8-billion-year-old pulse that has been traveling for more than half the lifetime of the universe.Īstronomers are fascinated by fast radio bursts for two reasons. Most bursts pass unnoticed, occurring outside the field of view of radio telescopes, and never occur again. Since the first such burst was spotted in 2006, we have found that nearly all of them come from distant galaxies.
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