FAST RADIO BURSTS

Fast radio bursts are millisecond long radio pulses with a rate as high as 10,000 bursts per sky per day. These mysterious bursts have been discovered as recently as 2007. The understanding of this phenomena has been dramatically evolving in the last few years, and many surprising discoveries make this an incredibly dynamic and exciting research topic. The most recent of these discoveries include the detection of an FRB from a magnetar in our own Galaxy, another in a globular cluster in the M81 galaxy and the discovery of periodicity in the signal of some FRBs. Understanding the conditions that lead to the formation of FRBs (1,2), their emission mechanism (3,4,5) and the source of their potential repeatability and periodicity (6,7) are among the driving theoretical questions of the moment. FRBs are also extremely promising as Cosmological probes such as the history of hydrogen reionization amongst others.