The Most Distant FRB Tells The Story Of Its Origin

What happened

Astronomers use the Webb to study a distant fast radio burst and reveal clues as to the origin of these mysterious events. When FRBs were first observed, it was difficult to distinguish them from terrestrial noise sources.

More exotic answers such as the collapse of hypothetical dark-matter stars have been proposed as well. Back in 2024 the MeerKAT radio array observed a burst designated FRB 20240304B.

The MeerKAT data was able to pin down the FRB's location very precisely, but optical observations of the area didn't reveal an object in that location. The Most Distant FRB Tells The Story Of Its Origin By Brian Koberlein - October 09, 2026 05:06 PM UTC | Stars Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are notoriously difficult to study.

They are bright radio chirps that only last just milliseconds. This means they must be caused by a powerful and fast-acting astrophysical process.

Given their intensity and duration, the likely causes of FRBs are either the merging of neutron stars as they become a black hole or some kind of flare-like event on the surface of a magnetar. But with only the radio bursts to go by, a specific origin is hard to prove.