Close, But No FRB

There was a report about a month ago that a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) produced a repeating signal.  This is big news because we really don’t know what causes FRBs, and once they have ended it can be difficult to trace their source.  But a repeating signal means we can pinpoint their origin and potentially figure out their root cause.  It’s no wonder the astronomical community was excited…and skeptical. Most of the FRBs that have been discovered were in archival data – data from past surveys that were given a closer look.  Only a few have been seen in real-time, so when...

Massive Star Seen Forming in Real Time

On the York Universe radio show this past Monday evening on astronomy.fm, I was having a discussion with another host about how so many things in Astronomy can take Millions or even Billions of years, yet there are still all kinds of phenomena that happen in seconds, hours, weeks, years, or on the scale of human lifetimes.  Stars live for hundreds of Millions of years at the low end, yet the intense brightening from the Supernova death of a massive star lasts for only a few days or weeks.  It’s as if the Universe is piquing our interest with short...