9 February 2021
by: Adam D. Cohen
The authors of the winning paper were the first to pinpoint the origin of a non-repeating fast radio burst. | Neil Orman/AAAS
A team of astronomers and astrophysicists based at 21 research institutions around the world will receive the 2020 Newcomb Cleveland Prize, presented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for a discovery that could improve our understanding of the structure of the Universe, as well as galaxy formation and evolution.
Each year since 1923, the Newcomb Cleveland Prize has honored the most impactful research paper published in the journal
Science. In this year’s winning paper, the authors described how they became the first to pinpoint the origin of a non-repeating fast radio burst (FRB). Though they last only a few milliseconds, FRBs are some of the brightest radio sources in the sky.