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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Science
Donna Lu

Astronomers detect mysterious burst of energy from a galaxy far, far away

MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope consisting of 64 antennas in the Meerkat National Park, in the Northern Cape of South Africa.
Scientists detected the burst using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa and subsequently identified its host galaxy using Nasa’s James Webb space telescope. Photograph: Brendon Wainwright/Wikipedia

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a mysterious flash of energy was released into the universe.

Astronomers have now detected that flash – a burst of radio waves which travelled for more than 10bn years before reaching Earth – what they believe to be the most distant fast radio burst (FRB) ever recorded.

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