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China’s FAST telescope detects mystery radio flashes from 3 billion light years away, with energy to rival the sun

  • Fast radio bursts last only a few milliseconds each but can release as much energy as the sun does in a year
  • Latest FRB from inside distant galaxy one of ‘most active’ ever seen, lead astronomer says in Nature report

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The radio source for the mystery flashes is located in an extremely dense and highly magnetic environment, scientists behind the discovery believe. Photo: Shutterstock
Ling Xin
An international team of scientists using the world’s largest radio telescope has detected a mysterious series of bright flashes from 3 billion light years away.

The flashes, known as repeating fast radio bursts (FRB), last for only a few milliseconds each but can release as much energy as the Earth’s sun does in a year.

Most FRBs have been seen only once. Less than 5 per cent of them generate multiple flashes that make follow-up observations possible, to understand where they come from and how they are produced.

Scientists using the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) located in southwestern China said the flashes they saw were being emitted by a compact radio source hiding inside a distant galaxy, according to a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The rare detection has fired up global interest for follow-up observations and theoretical analyses, said Dai Zigao, an astrophysicist at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, who was not involved in the research.

Li Di, the paper’s lead author and FAST chief scientist at the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), called it “one of the most active FRBs astronomers have ever seen”.

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