A dazzling bolt of radio light from across intergalactic space is the most powerful of its kind seen to date – and its location has been tracked with unprecedented precision.

On 16 March 2025, the CHIME radio telescope in Canada recorded a one-off fast radio burst ( FRB ) so powerful, astronomers initially weren't sure about what they were looking at – discharging in mere milliseconds as much energy as the output of the Sun over four days.

It has been named the RBFLOAT, or radio-brightest flash of all time.

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"It was so bright that our pipeline initially flagged it as radio frequency interference, signals often caused by cell phones or airplanes that are much closer to home," says astrophys

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