Researchers aim for the source of the fast radio burst
Enlarge / An event on the surface of a magnetar can produce a rapid radio explosion. A fast radio burst is exactly what the name suggests: a sudden wave of photons at radio frequencies that often lasts less than a second. After the scientists finished convincing themselves that they saw no equipment interference, a search was carried out for what generated the large amounts of energy involved in fast radio bursts (FRBs). The discovery of the first iterative FRB tells us that the process that generates the FRB does not destroy the object that generated it. Eventually, FRBs were discovered that were associated with events at additional wavelengths, allowing their source to be identified: magnetars, the subset of neutron stars that have the most extreme magnetic fields in the Universe. While that shows excellent progress, it still doesn’t tell us anything about the physics of how the explosion was generated—knowledge that will probably tell us why most magnetars don’t and why they t