Did the Webb telescope detect a fast radio burst, and how far away is it?

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1. 1

   Fast radio burst (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaPublished Oct 11, 2026Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “In radio astronomy, a fast radio burst (FRB) is a transient radio wave of duration ranging from a fraction of a millisecond, for an ultra-fast radio burst, to 3 seconds, caused by a high-energy astrophysical process that is not yet understood. Astronomers estimate the average FRB releases as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun puts out in three days. While extremely energetic at their source, the strength of the signal reaching Earth has been described as 1,000 times less than from a mobile phone on the Moon. The first FRB was discovered by Duncan Lorimer and his student David Narkevic in 2007 when they were looking through archival pulsar survey data, and it is therefore commonly referred to as the Lorimer burst. Many FRBs have since been recorded, including several that have been detected repeating in seemingly irregular ways. Only one FRB has been detected to repeat in a regular way: FRB 180916 seems to pulse every 16.35 days. Most FRBs are extragalactic, but the first Milky Way FRB was detected by the CHIME radio telescope in April 2020. In June 2021, astronomers reported over 500 FRBs detected in one year.”

2. 2

   A bright burst from FRB 20200120E in a globular cluster of the nearby galaxy M81.

   Nature communications (Zhang et al.)Published Aug 28, 2024Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are immensely energetic millisecond-duration radio pulses. Observations indicate that nearby FRBs can be produced by old stellar populations, as suggested by the localization of the repeating source FRB 20200120E in a globular cluster of M81. Nevertheless, the burst energies of FRB 20200120E are significantly smaller than those of other cosmological FRBs. Here, we report the detection of a bright burst from FRB 20200120E in 1.1 - 1.7 GHz, with a fluence of approximately 30 Jy ms, which is more than 42 times larger than the previously detected bursts near 1.4 GHz frequency. It reaches one-third of the energy of the weakest burst from FRB 20121102A and is detectable at a distance exceeding 200 Mpc. Our finding bridges the gap between nearby and cosmological FRBs and indicates that FRBs hosted in globular clusters can be bright enough to be observable at cosmological distances.”

3. 3

   Fast radio bursts and the radio perspective on multi-messenger gravitational lensing.

   Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences (Pastor-Marazuela)Published Apr 10, 2025Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “The advent of numerous facilities conducting dedicated FRB searches has dramatically revolutionized the field: hundreds of new bursts have been detected, and some are now known to repeat. Using interferometry, it is now possible to localize FRBs to their host galaxies, opening up new avenues for using FRBs as astrophysical probes. One promising application is studying gravitationally lensed FRBs. This review outlines the requirements for identifying a lensed FRB, taking into account their propagation effects and the importance of capturing the amplitude and phase of the signal. It also explores the different lens masses that could be probed with FRBs throughout the duration of an FRB survey, from stellar masses to individual galaxies. This highlights the unique cosmological applications of gravitationally lensed FRBs, including measurements of the Hubble constant and the compact object content of dark matter. Finally, we discuss future radio interferometers and the prospects for finding gravitationally lensed FRBs.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Multi-messenger gravitational lensing (Part 1)'.”

4. 4

   Multiwavelength constraints on the origin of a nearby repeating fast radio burst source in a globular cluster.

   Nature astronomy (Pearlman et al.)Published Nov 26, 2024Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “We place deep limits on the persistent and prompt X-ray emission from FRB 20200120E, which we use to constrain possible origins for the source. We compare our results with various classes of X-ray sources, transients and FRB models. We find that FRB 20200120E is unlikely to be associated with ultraluminous X-ray bursts, magnetar-like giant flares or an SGR 1935+2154-like intermediate flare. Although other types of bright magnetar-like intermediate flares and short X-ray bursts would have been detectable from FRB 20200120E during our observations, we cannot entirely rule them out as a class. We show that FRB 20200120E is unlikely to be powered by an ultraluminous X-ray source or a young extragalactic pulsar embedded in a Crab-like nebula. We also provide new constraints on the compatibility of FRB 20200120E with accretion-based FRB models involving X-ray binaries. These results highlight the power of multiwavelength observations of nearby FRBs for discriminating between FRB models.”