天文学家发现距地球最远快速射电暴 来自宇宙早期星系

天文学家利用南非MeerKAT射电望远镜和美国宇航局詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜，检测到迄今为止最遥远的快速射电暴FRB 20240304B13。这道神秘能量信号源自宇宙仅有30亿年历史的时期1，已传播超过100亿年才抵达地球13，其传播距离为之前纪录的两倍多1。该发现已发表在《科学》杂志上13。

研究表明，这次射电暴来自一个年轻且金属含量极低的小型星系13，宿主星系质量约为1000万倍太阳质量3。这一发现首次证明快速射电暴产生于宇宙大爆炸后约30亿年的星系快速形成时期3，为研究宇宙中电荷物质分布和磁场提供了关键数据3。快速射电暴可在毫秒内释放与太阳数月或数年相当的能量1，自2007年发现以来已有超过10,000个此类现象被检测到1。

Astronomers have identified the farthest fast radio burst on record, a phenomenon designated FRB 20240304B that originated more than 10 billion years ago and has been traveling through space ever since to reach Earth 13. The signal originated from the universe when it was only approximately 3 billion years old 1, making the detection distance more than twice as far as the previous record 1. Using South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, researchers confirmed that the burst came from a small, young galaxy with extremely low metal content 13. The host galaxy has a mass of roughly 10 million times that of the Sun 3.

The discovery reveals that fast radio bursts—events capable of releasing in milliseconds energy equivalent to what the Sun produces over months or years 1—were already occurring in the early universe during periods of rapid star formation 3. The findings, published in the journal Science 13, represent the first identification of a host galaxy for a fast radio burst originating from such an ancient epoch. This milestone extends astronomers' understanding of when and how these mysterious phenomena emerged and provides crucial data for studying the distribution of charged matter and magnetic fields across the cosmos 3. Since their initial discovery in 2007, more than 10,000 fast radio bursts have been detected 1.