A Fast Radio Burst (FRB) is a fast-moving burst of energy that can darken an entire galaxy for a few milliseconds. Hundreds of FRBs have been discovered in the last few years. They appear all over the sky like camera flashes in a stadium, but the sources of these intense bursts of radiation remain unclear.

This FRB is particularly strange because it exploded halfway across the universe, making it the farthest and most powerful ever detected.

And if that wasn’t weird enough, it got even weirder, according to follow-up observations after Hubble’s discovery. The FRB flared up in a seemingly unexpected place, a galaxy cluster that existed when the universe was only 5 billion years old. Previous FRBs have been found in isolated galaxies.

FRB 20220610A was first detected by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia on June 10, 2022, and was confirmed to be of distant origin by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. It is four times more energetic than nearby FRBs. This may cast doubt on the patterns produced by FRBs. Or could there be a selection effect where only very bright FRBs can be detected in half the universe?

“It took Hubble’s razor-sharp sharpness and sensitivity to determine where the FRB was coming from.” said lead author Alexa Gordon of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. “Without the Hubble images, it would still be a mystery whether this came from a single solid galaxy or some kind of interactive system. It’s these kinds of environments, these strange environments, that lead us to a better understanding of the FRB mystery.”

Hubble’s sharp images suggest that up to seven galaxies could be on the path to a possible merger, which would be very significant, the researchers said. Such galaxy groups are rare and may have given rise to conditions that trigger FRBs.

“At the end of the day, we’re trying to answer the question: What causes these things? What are their ancestors and what are their origins? Hubble’s observations provide fascinating insights into the surprising types of environments that cause these mysterious events Wen-Fai Fong, one of the researchers from Northwestern University, said:

Although astronomers have not reached a consensus on the possible mechanism behind this extraordinary phenomenon, it is generally believed that an FRB must contain some type of compact object, such as a black hole or neutron star. One extreme type of neutron star is called a magnetar, which is the most intense type of magnetic neutron star in the universe. It has a magnetic field so strong that if a magnetar were halfway between the Earth and the Moon, it could wipe out the magnetic stripe on everyone’s credit card on Earth. Worse still, if an astronaut were a few hundred kilometers away from the magnetar, he or she would actually dissolve, as every atom in his or her body would be annihilated.

Possible mechanisms include some form of sudden stellar fall or, alternatively, an explosion resulting from the magnetar’s spiral magnetic field lines breaking and reconnecting. A similar phenomenon occurs on the Sun, causing solar flares, but the magnetar field is trillions of times stronger than the Sun’s magnetosphere. The short circuit will trigger an FRB flash, or shock wave, which burns the surrounding dust and heats the gas into a plasma.

Magnetars can come in several varieties. In one case, this could be an exploding object orbiting a black hole surrounded by a disk of material. Another alternative is a pair of rotating neutron stars whose magnetospheres interact periodically, creating a gap in which explosions can occur. Magnetars are thought to have been active for about 10,000 years before settling, so they will be found where the starrise firestorm occurred. However, it seems that this is not the case for all magnetars.

In the near future, the sensitivity of FRB experiments will increase, leading to an unprecedented increase in the number of FRBs detected at these distances. Hubble will play a critical role in identifying the environment in which these FRBs emerge. Astronomers will soon learn just how special this FRB’s environment is.

“We need to continue to find more of these FRBs, both near and far and in all these different environments.” said Gordon.