"These weird environments are driving us toward better understanding of the mystery of FRBs."
The birthplace of the most distant fast radio burst (FRB), extremely powerful and unresolved flashes of radio frequencies, has been observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope discovered the FRB 18 months ago. The super-strong energy burst, which was four times more energetic than other FRBs that have been detected, came from an extremely distant location. Initially, researchers speculated that the blob could be a group of up to three galaxies. When Hubble took on the case, it became clear that there was a group of at least seven galaxies that existed when the Universe was only five billion years old. Carl Knox is from OzGrav/Swinburne University.
The finding caught the scientists by surprise. It would still remain a mystery if this was from a single galaxy or a system interacting with it. Gordon and her colleagues said in the statement that there is a possibility that the galaxies in question may be merging, which could contribute to the FRB's strength. It's possible that the progenitor of FRB 20220610A is related to a recent population of stars, which matches what we've learned from other FRBs. Only a fraction of the hundreds of FRB events discovered to date have been pinpointed to their host galaxies. Only a few came from a dense environment, but none have ever been seen in such a compact group. Scientists who've worked on this discovery are hopeful that it will contribute to their understanding of how these strange transmissions work. "These types of environments are driving us toward better understanding the mystery of FRBs," Gordon said.