Scientists pinpoint the most distant fast radio burst ever detected, traced to a galaxy 10 billion light-years away

From the Newshound archive · first published 8 October 2026 · last updated 9 October 2026.

A record-breaking burst of radio waves, dubbed FRB 20240304B, has been traced to a small, star-forming dwarf galaxy that existed when the universe was only three billion years old — reaching across more than twice the distance spanned by the previous record holder. Researchers used South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope to detect the signal, then turned to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope after ground-based instruments proved too weak to spot its faint host galaxy. The burst travelled through roughly 80% of cosmic history before reaching Earth, lasting just milliseconds yet releasing as much energy as the sun emits over months. University of Sydney researcher Manisha Caleb said the flash gives scientists an exceptional means of examining how galaxies and the diffuse matter surrounding them have changed over time.

The host galaxy is surprisingly small and metal-poor, pointing to young magnetars — neutron stars born from exploding massive stars — as the likely source.

When the burst was produced, lead researcher Dr Themiya Nanayakkara noted, 'there was no Earth, there was no sun.'

The findings, published in the journal Science, involved teams from the Universities of Manchester, Oxford and UC Santa Cruz, alongside Australian and South African researchers.