Fast Radio Bursts (FBRs) have fascinated astronomers ever since the first one was detected in 2007. This event was named the "Lorimer Burst" after it discoverer, Duncan Lorimer from West Virginia University.
In radio astronomy, this phenomenon refers to transient radio pulses coming from distant cosmological sources, which typically last a few milliseconds on average.
Over two dozen events have been discovered since 2007 and scientists are still not sure what causes them – though theories range from exploding stars and black holes to pulsars and magnetars.
However, according to a new study by a team of Chinese astronomers, FRBs may be linked to crusts forming around "strange stars". According to a model they created, it is the collapse of these crusts that lead to high-energy bursts that can be seen light-years away.
The study, titled "Fast Radio Bursts from the collapse of Strange Star Crusts", recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal. The team was led by Yue Zhang of the School of Astronomy and Space Science (SASC) at Nanjing University and included Jin-Jun Geng and Yong-Feng Huang – a postdoc and professor from the SASC and the Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (also at Nanjing University), respectively.
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