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An
article in The Conversation by Ryan Shannon (Swinburne Uni)
describes the ASKAP detection of Fast Radio Burst detected on June 6,
2022, known officially as FRB 20220610A. As usual, the lower
frequencies arrived later, due to dispersion in the inter-stellar and
inter-galactic mediums, with the unusually high rate of dispersion in
this burst suggesting it might be the most distant ever found. The
team turned to one of the world’s most powerful optical observatories
to search for the host galaxy: the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in
Chile. Analysing the spectrum of light from the galaxy showed it was
strongly "redshifted", meaning the emission from the burst has doubled
in wavelength as it stretched out on its journey through the expanding
universe. The redshift had a value just over 1, which means the burst
was emitted more than 8 billion years ago, when the universe was less
than half its present age. This confirmed that FRB 20220610A had
broken the record for the most distant fast radio burst.
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