Identifying the source of perytons at the Parkes radio telescope

Understand

"Perytons" are millisecond-duration transients of terrestrial origin, whose frequency-swept emission mimics the dispersion of an astrophysical pulse that has propagated through tenuous cold plasma.

• In fact, their similarity to FRB 010724 had previously cast a shadow over the interpretation of "fast radio bursts," which otherwise appear to be of extragalactic origin.
• Until now, the physical origin of the dispersion-mimicking perytons had remained a mystery.
• We have identified strong out-of-band emission at 2.3--2.5 GHz associated with several peryton events.