"This result marks a turning point: instead of just detecting these mysterious flashes, we can now see exactly where they're coming from. "
Astronomers have discovered what may be the brightest flash of radio waves ever seen and have tracked this fast radio burst (FRB) back to its source. This feat could revolutionize theories surrounding these mysterious and rapid blasts of radiation that, in mere milliseconds, can emit as much energy as the sun does in its entire lifetime.
First spotted in 2007, FRBs have been difficult for astronomers to explain. This is because they last such a brief amount of time and only a small sample of them repeat, making follow-up investigations difficult. Though many explanations have been posited for FRBs, the leading culprits are extreme dead stars or "neutron stars" with magnetic fields so powerful they warrant a categorization of their own and are thus dubbed "magnetars."
The new FRB has been officially designated FRB 20250316A and has been given the nickname "RBFLOAT," which stands for "Radio Brightest FLash Of All Time." This unusually bright FRB was first spotted in March 2025 by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), which has been dubbed an "FRB discovery machine" thanks to its immense impact in spotting new FRBs.
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