Webb just caught the most distant fast radio burst ever — from a tiny galaxy

A split-second flash of radio light, fired off when the universe was only about 3 billion years old, has finally been traced home. Astronomers led by Manisha Caleb at the University of Sydney used the Webb Space Telescope to pin FRB 20240304B — the most distant fast radio burst on record — to a small, star-forming dwarf galaxy a thousand times less massive than expected, more than doubling the previous distance record. The burst's signal is also letting them probe the invisible matter drifting between galaxies.