Fast Radio Bursts Now a Bit Less Mysterious

The dishes of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array depicted making the first-ever localization of a Fast Radio Burst. (Credit: Danielle Futselaar [www.artsource.nl])For as long as astronomers have known about Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), they’ve been stumped. About a decade ago, researchers discovered in archived 2001 data an extremely fast — just a few milliseconds — burst of radio emissions. They’d never seen anything like it before, and didn’t know where it came from or what could cause it. Finally, we’re starting to get a few answers. Astronomers announced today at the 229^th meeting of the American Astronomical Society that, for the first time, they’d pinpointed the origins of one of these FRBs: a small dwarf galaxy about 2.5 billion light-years away. Today’s news, which is also detailed in articles in Nature and The Astrophysical Journal Letters, also found a new source of persistent, weaker radio emissions nearby; presumably ...