Astronomers have traced FRB 20240304B, the most distant fast radio burst on record, to its home galaxy using the James Webb Space Telescope. South Africa's MeerKAT telescope first detected the burst on March 4, 2024; the study was published October 8 in Science.
The light left its source when the universe was about three billion years old, more than doubling the distance of the previous record holder. Webb showed the host galaxy is small, metal-poor and forming many stars.
Researchers suggest the burst may have come from a magnetar, a highly magnetized stellar core left behind by a supernova. Finding such bursts at great distances lets astronomers use them to probe matter between galaxies in the early universe.