A fast radio burst localised to a massive galaxy

Understand

Intense, millisecond-duration bursts of radio waves have been detected from beyond the Milky Way [1].

• Their extragalactic origins are evidenced by their large dispersion measures, which are greater than expected for propagation through the Milky Way interstellar medium alone, and imply contributions from the intergalactic medium and potentially host galaxies [2].
• Although several theories exist for the sources of these fast radio bursts, their intensities, durations and temporal structures suggest coherent emission from highly magnetised plasma [3,4].
• Two sources have been observed to repeat [5,6], and one repeater (FRB 121102) has been localised to the largest star-forming region of a dwarf galaxy at a cosmological redshift of 0.19 [7, 8].