A fast radio burst associated with a Galactic magnetar

Understand

Since their discovery in 2007, much effort has been devoted to uncovering the sources of the extragalactic, millisecond-duration fast radio bursts (FRBs).

• A class of neutron star known as magnetars is a leading candidate source of FRBs.
• Magnetars have surface magnetic fields in excess of $10^{14}$ G, the decay of which powers a range of high-energy phenomena.
• Here we present the discovery of a millisecond-duration radio burst from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154, with a fluence of $1.5\pm 0.3$ Mega-Jansky milliseconds.