NRAO Scientist Available for Comment on Fast Radio Burst Discovery

Newswise — In a paper to be published in the 25 February edition of Nature, an international team of scientists reports the first identification of the host galaxy of a mysterious Fast Radio Burst (FRB). The scientists used a combination of radio and optical telescopes to identify the location of the FRB and determine that it came from a galaxy some 6 billion light-years from Earth. Their work provides important insights on the nature of FRBs and on the distribution of matter in the Universe.

Dr. Sarah Burke Spolaor, a scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico, is a member of the research team that made this discovery. She works in the fields of time-domain radio astronomy, which includes FRBs, and gravitational wave detection with pulsar timing arrays. She previously worked as a researcher at JPL/Caltech and at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science in Sydney, Australia.

Dr. Spolaor is available for interviews about this discovery and its implications.

She may be reached at: [email protected]

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.