Universe Today
Glossary · Galaxies & Cosmology
Fast radio burst
Also written FRB
A millisecond flash of radio energy from another galaxy, cause still unsettled.
A fast radio burst lasts about a thousandth of a second and releases as much energy in that instant as the Sun does in days. The first was found in 2007 in archived data; there are now thousands. Most come from other galaxies, which is known from how much the burst is smeared out by the intervening gas — lower frequencies arrive fractionally later, and the delay measures the distance travelled. At least some come from magnetars, extremely magnetised neutron stars: one went off inside our own galaxy in 2020 and was caught by two telescopes at once. Whether that explains all of them is still open.
Where it has come up lately
Phys.org
Physics World
Universe Today
AAS Nova
Related terms
Redshift
The stretching of light from distant objects, and the universe's odometer.
Hubble tension
Two good measurements of the universe's expansion rate that stubbornly disagree.
Dark energy
The name for whatever is making the expansion of the universe speed up.
Dark matter
Matter that has gravity but does not interact with light, and outweighs the visible sort five to one.
Questions
What is Fast radio burst?
A millisecond flash of radio energy from another galaxy, cause still unsettled.
Why does it matter?
At least some come from magnetars, extremely magnetised neutron stars: one went off inside our own galaxy in 2020 and was caught by two telescopes at once. Whether that explains all of them is still open.