An international team of scientists led by McGill University researchers has provided the clearest evidence yet that some fast radio bursts (FRBs) — enigmatic, millisecond-long flashes of radio waves from space — originate from neutron stars, the ultra-dense remnants of massive stars that have exploded in a supernova. This finding, based on an analysis of the radio signal of a single FRB, advances our understanding of one of the universe’s most perplexing phenomena. 

MIT astronomers pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst, a brief and brilliant explosion of radio waves emitted by an extremely compact object. The team’s novel technique might also reveal the sources of other FRBs.