Fast radio bursts may originate from nearby flaring stars

Understand

Six cases of fast radio bursts (FRBs) have recently been discovered.

• The FRBs are bright (~0.1 - 1 Jy) and brief (~ 1 ms) pulses of radio emission with dispersion measures (DMs) that exceed Galactic values, and hence FRBs have been interpreted to be at cosmological distances.
• We propose, instead, that FRBs are rare eruptions of flaring main-sequence stars within ~1 kpc.
• Rather than associating their excess DM with the intergalactic medium, we relate it to a blanket of coronal plasma around their host stars.