Astronomers have a recorder record for record record records of records out of 130 million light years

A team of astronomers spotted RBFLOAT, one of the brightest radio stations never seen, and traced it to a galaxy at 130 million light years.

Using the new Chime goalkeeper table, the researchers identified its origin with a spiral arm near a region of stars formation, strengthening the case of magnetars as a source of these mysterious explosions.

One of the brightest FRBs ever detected

An international group of researchers, including astrophysicists from Northwest Universityidentified one of the brightest rapid gusts (FRBS) never seen and determined its origin with a level of precision Never accomplished before.

The flash lasted only one fraction of a second and received the nickname of Rbfloat (abbreviation of “the most brilliant flash of all time” and, yes, a wink to “Root Beer Float”). It was detected by the Canadian experience of cartography of the intensity of hydrogen (carillon) as well as its network of newly completed “stabilizer”. By coordinating stations measurements in British Columbia, Virginia-Western and California, the team traced the bursting of an arm in a specific spiral of a galaxy located at 130 million light years, with an amazing precision of only 42 light years.

The FRB are notoriously difficult to study because they disappear almost instantly and occur at huge distances. When astronomers are able to identify the exact location of one, they can examine in detail its environment, learning the host galaxy, its distance from the earth and the possible causes of the burst. Over time, these ideas can help scientists discover the real origins of these short but powerful events.

The details of the discovery were published on August 21 THE Astrophysical newspaper letters. This marks the first time that the fully operational standard table has been used to determine the position of a FRB.

A turning point in FRB Science

“It is remarkable that only a few months after the full stabilizer table was released online, we discovered an extremely brilliant FRB in a galaxy in our own cosmic district,” said Wen Fong of Northwestern, a main author of the study. “It augurs very well for the future. An increase in event rates always offers the possibility of discovering rarer events. The Carillon / FRB collaboration worked for many years towards this technical achievement, and the universe rewarded us with an absolute gift. ”

“This result marks a turning point,” said the corresponding author Amanda Cook, a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University. “Instead of simply detecting these mysterious flashes, we can now see exactly where they come from. It opens the door to discover if they are caused by dying stars, exotic magnetic objects or something what we have not even thought about.”

Fong, specializing in the study of cosmic explosions, is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences of Northwestern. It is also part of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and the NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky (Skai Institute).

Four days of solar energy in the blink of an eye

Flaying and disappearing in a few milliseconds, the FRB are brief and powerful radio explosions that generate more energy in a quick explosion that our sun does not emit during an entire year. While most go unnoticed, from time to time, a FRB is shiny enough to detect. FRB20250316A, or RBFLOAT, was one of these rare events. Detected in March 2025, RBFLOAT released as much energy in a few milliseconds as the sun produces it in four days.

“It was so brilliant that our pipeline initially reported it as a radio frequency interference, signals often caused by mobile phones or planes that are much closer to their home,” said Fong. “It took a little detective by the members of our collaboration to discover that it was a real astrophysical signal.”

And while many FRB is repeated – pulsating several times over several months – RBFLOAT has expressed all its energy in a single burst. Even in hundreds of hours after observation for the first time, astronomers did not detect repeated gusts from the source. This means that astrophysicists could not wait for another rocket to collect more data. Instead, they only had one stroke of its location.

“RBFLOAT was the first unrepeated source located on such precision,” said Sunil Simha of Northwestern, a postdoctoral scholar at CIER and study co-author. “These are much more difficult to locate. Thus, even the detection of RBFLOAT is proof of concept that the chime is indeed capable of detecting such events and of building a statistically interesting sample of FRB. ”

FRB Forensics points to a magnetar

To investigate the origin of RBFLOAT, scientists relied on the carillon, a large radio-telescope in British Columbia and the most prolific FRB hunter in the world. Smaller versions of the carillon, the stabilizers allow astronomers to triangulate the signals to precisely limit the specific locations of Frbs on the sky.

With this range of points of view, the team retraced the bursting of the Big Dipper Constellation on the outskirts of a galaxy at around 130 million light years from the earth. The team specified it precisely in a region at only 45 light years in diameter, which is less than a cluster of medium stars.

The monitoring observations of the 6.5 -meter MMT telescope in Arizona and the Keck Cosmic web imaging on the 10 -meter Keck II telescope in Hawai’i have provided the most detailed view to this day of an undisped FRB environment. Simha analyzed the optical data obtained from Keck, and the student graduated from North Yuxin “Vic” Dong used the MMT to obtain deep optical images of the host galaxy of the FRB.

Their surveys have revealed that the burst occurred along a spiral arm of the galaxy, which is dotted with many regions of star formation. The RBFLOAT occurred near, but not inside, one of these stars formation regions. Although astrophysicists still do not know exactly what causes FRB, these proofs strengthen a leading hypothesis. At least, some seem to come from magnetars, ultra -aibnetic neutron stars born from the death of massive stars. Star formation regions often welcome young magnetiers, which are energetic enough to produce fast and powerful gusts.

“We found that the FRB is on the outskirts of a star formation region that welcomes massive stars,” said Simha. “For the first time, we could even estimate how much it is in the surrounding gas, and it is relatively shallow.”

The rich data set of Keck and the precise location of FRB allowed the team to carry out a primary analysis of its kind of the properties of the galaxy on the location of the FRB. These discovered characteristics include the galaxy gas density, the star formation rate and the presence of heavier elements than hydrogen and helium.

“The FRB is on a spiral arm of its host galaxy,” added Dong, who is the main researcher of the MMT program. “Spiral arms are generally stars training sites in progress, which supports the idea that it came from a magnetar. Using our extremely sensitive MMT image, we were able to zoom more and see that the FRB is in fact outside the nearest stars formation tuft. FRB site and far from the center of the Toump. »»

A new era of discovery

With the hikers’ stories which are now completely running, astronomers expect to pin hundreds of FRB each year – bringing them closer to solving the mystery of what causes these spectacular lightnings. The power of location of stabilizers, combined off the broad field of vision of Chime, marks a turning point for FRB research.

“For years, we know that the FRB occurs in the sky, but pining them was carefully slow,” said Dong. “Now we can regularly attach them to specific galaxies, even to the districts of these galaxies.”

“The entire FRB community has only published during the events well located in the past eight years,” said Simha. “Now we are expecting more than 200 specific detections per year from Carillon only. RBFLOAT was a spectacular source to start building such a sample. ”

“Thanks to timers, we are now entering a new era of Science FRB,” said the study co-author, Tarraneh Eftekhari, who is the deputy director of Ciera. “With hundreds of precisely localized events expected in the coming years, we can start understanding the complete extent of the environments from which these mysterious signals emanate, bringing us closer to a step further to unlock their secrets. Rbfloat is only the beginning. “

Explore more: the most brilliant radio flash ever detected at the nearby Galaxy

Reference: “FRB 20250316A: A brilliant and nearby Radio broke out located on 13 PC precision” by Thomas C. Abbott, Daniel Amouyal, Bridget C. Andersen, Shion E. Andrew, Kevin Bandura, Mohit Bhardwaj, Kalyani Bhopi, Yash Bhusare, Charanjot Cai, Tomas Cassanel Chatterjee, Jean-François Cliche, Amanda M. Cook, Alice P. Curtin, Evan Davies-Velie, Matt Dobbs, Fengqiu Adam Dong, Yuxin Dong, Gwendolyn Eadie Hessels, Dané M. Hewitt, Jeff Huang, Naman Jain, Ronniy. C. Joseph, Lordrick Kahinga, Victoria M. Kaspi, Afrasiyab (Afrokk) Khan, Bikash Kharel, Adam E. Lanman, Magnus L’Argent, Mattias Lazda, Calvin Leung, Robert Main, Lluis Mas-Ribas, Kiyoshi W. Masui, Kyle McGregor, Ryan McKinven, Daniele Michilli, Nicole Mulyk, Mason NG, Kenzie Nimmo, Ayush Pandhi, Swarali Shivraj Patil, Aaron B. Pearlman, Ue-li Pen, Ziggy Pleunis, J. Xavier nextka Scholz, Vishwangi Shah, Kaitlyn Shin, Seth R. Siegel, Sunil Simha, Kendrick Smith, Ingrid Stirs, David C. Stenning, Hachen Wang, Thomas Boles, Ismaël Cognard, Tammo Jan Dijkema, Alexi V. Filipsenko, Charcin P. Gawroński, Wolfgang Herrmann, Charcin P. Gawro. Kilpatrick, Franz Kirsten, Shawn Knabel, Omar S. Ould-Boukattine, Hadrien Paugnat, Weronika Puchalska, William Sheu, Aswin Suresh, Aaron Tohuvavohu, Tommaso Treu and Weikang Zheng, August 21, 2025, Astrophysical newspaper letters.
Two: 10.3847 / 2041-8213 / ADF62F

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Research Corporation of Science Advancement, La Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Canadian Natural Sciences Council of Canada, Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Trottier Space Institute McGill. Carillon’s collaboration includes astrophysicists from Northwestern, McGill University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia and several other institutions.

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