The Physics of Fast Radio Bursts

Understand

In 2007, a very bright radio pulse was identified in the archival data of the Parkes Telescope in Australia, marking the beginning of a new research branch in astrophysics.

• In 2013, this kind of millisecond bursts with extremely high brightness temperature takes a unified name, fast radio burst (FRB).
• Over the first few years, FRBs seemed very mysterious because the sample of known events was limited.
• With the improvement of instruments over the last five years, hundreds of new FRBs have been discovered.