Sri Lankan scientist Themiya Nanayakkara is a co-author of a study in the journal Science on the oldest fast radio burst recorded, which came from a galaxy about 10 billion years ago.
The international team was led by University of Sydney astrophysicist Dr. Manisha Caleb. The burst, named FRB 20240304B, was first recorded in 2024 by the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. Researchers then used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to trace it to a small, actively star-forming galaxy that existed about three billion years after the Big Bang.
Fast radio bursts are flashes of radio waves lasting a few milliseconds. Researchers believe they may come from highly magnetised neutron stars known as magnetars, though their origin is uncertain.
Caleb told ABC News of Australia that the signal began its journey billions of years before the Sun and the solar system existed.
Scientists say distant bursts such as this could help map the cosmic web, the vast structure of matter that links galaxies.
