A mysterious cosmic signal has been detected in a dead galaxy - what's behind it?

Astronomers have found that the mysterious fast radio signal was picked up in an unexpected place - an ancient, massive dead galaxy, far from active star formation.

The discovery shattered assumptions

Astronomers have for the first time traced the traces of a fast radio burst (FRB) at the edge of an ancient, dead elliptical galaxy. This is an unprecedented location for a phenomenon previously associated with much younger galaxies.

The discovery shatters assumptions that FRBs come only from regions of active star formation. 

The new observations suggest that the origin of these mysterious cosmic phenomena may be more diverse than previously thought.

The signal has been detected more than once

Astronomers first detected the new FRB, named FRB 20240209A, in February 2024 using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME).

FRBs, which erupt and disappear in milliseconds, are short, powerful radio bursts that generate more energy in a single burst than our Sun emits in an entire year.

But this FRB has been triggered more than once. 

Between the first explosion in February and July 2024, the same source triggered 21 more pulses. Six of them were also detected by a telescope 60 km from the main CHIME station. 

A galaxy hundreds of billions of times the mass of the Sun

FRB 20240209A was found to have originated at the edge of an 11.3 billion-year-old neighbouring galaxy just 2 billion light-years from Earth.

To find out more about this unusual host galaxy, scientists carried out simulations using high-performance computers. 

They found that the galaxy is very bright and incredibly massive - 100 billion times the mass of our Sun.

"The location of this FRB raises questions about how such energetic phenomena can occur in regions where new stars are not forming," said co-investigator Vishwangi Shah.

Further investigations into the origin of the FRB

The new FRB is thought to have originated in a dense globular cluster. 

Such deposits are promising locations for magnetars that may have formed by other mechanisms and are associated with older stars.

However, it is not known for sure whether there is a globular cluster at the location of the new FRB. So now scientists have proposed using the James Webb Space Telescope to make further observations of the FRB site.