Christopher D. Martin

The night of March 4, 2024. The MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa catches a millisecond pulse: a fast radio burst coming from a depth of 17.4 gigaparsecs. This is light that traveled 10.5 billion years to reach Earth.

At the center of galaxy VV 340a lies a supermassive black hole — an object with gravity so strong that even light cannot escape it. It emits a relativistic jet: a narrow stream of matter accelerated to near-light speeds.