They come from somewhere in the distant universe--probably some 6 billion to 11 billion light years away. They don't last very long, only about one-thousandth of a second. They happen all the time, up to 10,000 times a day. They create intense bursts of radio emission but nothing else--no light, no x-rays, no other visible evidence. And nobody knows what they are. Until now, nobody was even sure they existed.
Radio map of the sky highlights rapidly varying objects. Black dots are pulsars, the spinning remnants of dead stars. Red asterisks mark the four new mystery objects. (Credit: MPIfR/ C. Ng; Science/ D. Thornton et al.) Astronomers are calling these enigmatic signals "fast radio bursts" or "Lorimer bursts," after Duncan Lorimer, the researcher who detected the first one. The timing of the press releases made me momentarily suspicious--a fireworks-type story that breaks on the 4th of July?--but a quick look ...
