Astronomers Discover Source of Radio Wave Bursts

Astronomers Discover Source of Radio Wave Bursts
Comet Neowise is viewed in the early morning sky from Mississippi Mills, Ontario on July 18, 2020. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Andrew Chen
Updated:

Something in space has been releasing fleeting blasts of radio waves, and scientists have finally unraveled this decade-old astronomical mystery.

The outbursts of energy, known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), are millisecond-duration radio pulses which were first identified in 2007 from archived data recorded at the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia, in July 2001.