Fast Radio Bursts---A Brief Review: Some Questions, Fewer Answers

Understand

Fast Radio Bursts are millisecond bursts of radio radiation at frequencies of about 1 GHz, recently discovered in pulsar surveys.

• They have not yet been definitively identified with any other astronomical object or phenomenon.
• The bursts are strongly dispersed, indicating passage through a high column density of low density plasma.
• The most economical interpretation is that this is the interglactic medium, indicating that FRB are at "cosmological" distances with redshifts in the range 0.3--1.3.