Astronomers just doubled the record for the most distant flash ever seen in the cosmos

FRB 20240304B, detected via South Africa's MeerKAT telescope, travelled more than 10 billion years — emitted when the universe was about 3 billion years old — more than doubling the previous distance record for a fast radio burst. Led by Dr. Manisha Caleb and Dr. Themiya Nanayakkara of the University of Sydney, published in Science, with the host galaxy found using JWST. The tiny, metal-poor, furiously star-forming host galaxy points to young magnetars as the source — and the burst's light also maps invisible matter between galaxies.