LINK to story in New Atlas by Michael Irving. The universe appears to be full of strange radio signals that come and go so quickly that their sources are difficult to locate. As such, we don’t really know what causes these fast radio bursts (FRBs). But now astronomers have traced one back to its home galaxy – the closest one yet – which could help unravel the mystery. “What’s very interesting about this particular repeating FRB is that it is in the arm of a Milky Way-like spiral galaxy, and is the closest to Earth thus far localized,” says Kevin Bandura, KE8NEJ, co-author of the study (published in Nature). “The unique proximity and repetition of this FRB might allow for observation in other wavelengths and the potential for more detailed study to understand the nature of this type of FRB.” Things are only getting more confusing. (Adam Mann, Live Science)
This was a very difficult set of observations to undertake, as it used several separate dishes as a direct phase-disconnected intercontinental interferometer (VLBI) with the bursts lasting 1-2 MILLISECONDS. These are extremely 'bright' (in terms of emission temperature) radio sources whose extent is limited to 0.002 times the speed of light, in size (0.002 seconds time 3 x 10 ^5 km/s.= figure it out VERY energetic and thus at this time not understood.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away... operators where performing some moon bounce experiments on UHF using their quark powered power amps...
