A short, sharp flash of radio waves from a mysterious source up to 5.5 billion light years from Earth has been detected in real-time by CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia.
Swinburne University of Technology PhD student, Emily Petroff, 'saw' the burst live - a first for astronomers.
Lasting only milliseconds, the first such radio burst was discovered in 2007 by astronomers combing old Parkes data archives for unrelated objects. Six more bursts, apparently from outside our Galaxy, have now been found with the Parkes telescope and a seventh with the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.
Astronomers worldwide have been vying to explain the phenomenon.
"These bursts were generally discovered weeks, months or even more than a decade after they happened. We are the first to catch one in real time, " Ms Petroff said.
