A fast radio burst event called FRB 20220610A flashed in what seems like an unlikely place: a collection of at least seven galaxies that existed when the Universe was only 5 billion years old. The large majority of previous fast radio bursts have been found in isolated galaxies.
FRB 20220610A was first detected on June 10, 2022, by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia.
ESO’s Very Large Telescope confirmed that the FRB came from a distant place. The FRB was four times more energetic than closer FRBs.
“It required Hubble’s keen sharpness and sensitivity to pinpoint exactly where the FRB came from,” said Dr. Alexa Gordon, an astronomer at Northwestern University.
“Without Hubble’s imaging, it would still remain a mystery as to whether this was originating from one monolithic galaxy or from some type of interacting system.”
“It’s these types of environments — these weird ones — that are driving us toward better understanding the mystery of FRBs.”
Hubble’s crisp images suggest FRB 20220610A originated in an environment where there may be as many as seven galaxies on a possible path to merging, which would also be very significant.
“We are ultimately trying to answer the questions: What causes them? What are their progenitors and what are their origins?” said Northwestern University astronomer Wen-fai Fong.
“The Hubble observations provide a spectacular view of the surprising types of environments that give rise to these mysterious events.”
Despite hundreds of detected FRBs, their progenitors are uncertain; one leading candidate is magnetars.
They have a magnetic field that is so strong that, if a magnetar was located halfway between Earth and the Moon, it would erase the magnetic strip on everyone’s credit card in the world.
Much worse yet, if an astronaut traveled within a few hundred miles of the magnetar, they would effectively be dissolved, because every atom in their…
Read the full article here