A Fast Radio Burst in the Milky Way
Astronomers first detected a so-called Fast Radio Burst in 2007, and since then they have catalogued quite a few more of these unusual radio pulses, which sometimes are one-offs and sometimes repeat in odd patterns. No one knew what produced these signals, and none had ever been spotted coming from our own galaxy—until this April. The major discovery this year of a Fast Radio Burst coming from a magnetar in the Milky Way has opened up a whole new phase of research into these pulses.
