Astronomers detect mysterious 8-billion-year-old energy burst

Burst in less than a millisecond unleashed amount of energy our sun emits in 30 years

Astronomers have detected an intense flash of radio waves coming from what looks like a merger of galaxies dating to about eight billion years ago – the oldest-known instance of a phenomenon called a fast radio burst that continues to defy explanation.

This burst in less than a millisecond unleashed the amount of energy our sun emits in three decades, researchers said.

It was detected using the Australian SKA Pathfinder, a radio telescope in the state of Western Australia.

Its location was pinpointed by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, one of the most powerful optical telescopes.

A fast radio burst, or FRB, is a pulse of radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation. It lasts a small fraction of a second but outshines most other sources of radio waves in the universe.

Radio waves have the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum.