News Astronomy

A fast radio burst from a dead galaxy puzzles astronomers

The blast challenges theories of how these flashes form

A large radio dish sits beneath a starry sky.

The CHIME telescope array in Canada, shown here, detected a fast radio burst coming from an unusual location.

CHIME, Andre Renard/Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics/University of Toronto

By Lisa Grossman

A staccato blast of electromagnetic energy has been tracked to an old, dead galaxy for the first time. The discovery supports the idea that there are more ways to produce such flares, called fast radio bursts, than originally thought.