Explore spaceStart a project

Phenomena · Space Codex

Fast radio bursts

Radio flashes lasting thousandths of a second, mostly from distant galaxies.

Millisecond flashes from across the universe

Phenomena
  • Last reviewed 10 Oct 2026
  • 8 sources

At a glance

Fast radio bursts at a glance, with sources
MeasureValueSource
CHIME/FRB Catalog 24,539 bursts from 3,641 sources (2018–2023 data)CHIME/FRB Collaboration 2026 (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)CHIME/FRB Collaboration 2026 (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)
Brightest yetFRB 20250316A from NGC 4141, about 130 million ly awayGreen Bank Observatory: brightest FRB (opens in a new tab)Green Bank Observatory: brightest FRB (opens in a new tab)
Milky Way sourceMagnetar SGR 1935+2154 (2020)Bochenek et al. 2020, Nature (opens in a new tab)Bochenek et al. 2020, Nature (opens in a new tab)
First foundThe 'Lorimer burst': recorded at Parkes in 2001, reported in 2007; it lasted under 5 msLorimer et al. 2007, Science (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)Lorimer et al. 2007, Science (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)
Repeaters981 of CHIME's catalogued bursts came from 83 repeating sourcesCHIME/FRB Collaboration 2026 (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)CHIME/FRB Collaboration 2026 (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)
First host galaxyFRB 121102, the first repeater, traced in 2016 to a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion ly awayChatterjee et al. 2017, Nature (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)Chatterjee et al. 2017, Nature (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)
In a globular clusterRepeater FRB 20200120E sits in an old star cluster of the M81 galaxy groupKirsten et al. 2022, Nature (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)Kirsten et al. 2022, Nature (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)

Key points

Thousands are now known, and at least some come from magnetars.

  • Last only milliseconds
  • Thousands detected by CHIME
  • At least some come from magnetars

A burst in the archive

Duncan Lorimer and his student David Narkevic found the first FRB in 2007, while searching archived pulsar-survey data recorded in 2001 by the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. The pulse lasted under 5 milliseconds, but it was so stretched across frequencies that it must have crossed far more free electrons than the Milky Way holds. Many astronomers suspected interference until similar bursts turned up in other data in the following years.

Weighing the void

Low radio frequencies arrive later than high ones because free electrons along the path slow them. The delay measures how much ordinary matter lies between galaxies.

Finding the missing matter

In 2020 a team using Australia's ASKAP telescope combined the delays of a handful of precisely located bursts with their host galaxies' distances. The total of ordinary matter they found matched what the CMB and Big Bang nucleosynthesis predict, accounting for gas between galaxies that had been too thin and diffuse to detect directly.

Repeaters and one-offs

Most FRB sources have been seen only once, but some repeat. The first repeater, FRB 121102, let astronomers pin down a host in 2016: a faint dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light-years away. In CHIME's second catalogue, 83 of 3,641 sources repeated. Whether repeaters and one-off bursts are the same kind of object is still debated.

What makes them

The 2020 flash from the Milky Way magnetar SGR 1935+2154 showed that magnetars can produce FRB-like bursts, though it was weaker than most distant ones. But one repeater lies in a globular cluster, a group of stars billions of years old, which is hard to square with young magnetars born in recent supernovae. More than one kind of source may be involved.

Missions

  1. 2018–

    CHIME/FRB

    CHIME collaborationActive

    Canadian radio telescope that finds fast radio bursts daily.

  • MagnetarsThe strongest magnets in the universe

Sources

  1. Macquart et al. 2020, Nature (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)
  2. Max Planck Society: home galaxy of a fast radio burst identified (opens in a new tab)
  3. CHIME/FRB Collaboration 2026 (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)
  4. Green Bank Observatory: brightest FRB (opens in a new tab)
  5. Bochenek et al. 2020, Nature (opens in a new tab)
  6. Lorimer et al. 2007, Science (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)
  7. Chatterjee et al. 2017, Nature (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)
  8. Kirsten et al. 2022, Nature (arXiv) (opens in a new tab)

Last reviewed against these sources. Built from public NASA, ESA and JPL data; not affiliated with or endorsed by any agency.