Fast Radio Burst Discovered in the Arecibo Pulsar ALFA Survey

Understand

Recent work has exploited pulsar survey data to identify temporally isolated, millisecond-duration radio bursts with large dispersion measures (DMs).

• These bursts have been interpreted as arising from a population of extragalactic sources, in which case they would provide unprecedented opportunities for probing the intergalactic medium; they may also be linked to new source classes.
• Until now, however, all so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been detected with the Parkes radio telescope and its 13-beam receiver, casting some concern about the astrophysical nature of these signals.
• Here we present FRB 121102, the first FRB discovery from a geographic location other than Parkes.