Every so often, astronomers glimpse an intense flash of radio waves from space – a flash that lasts only instants but puts out as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun does in a few years. The origin of these “fast radio bursts” is one of the greatest mysteries in astronomy today.
There is no shortage of ideas to explain the cause of the bursts: a catalogue of current theories shows more than 50 potential scenarios. You can take your pick from highly magnetised neutron stars, collisions of incredibly dense stars or many more extreme or exotic phenomena.
