In 2001, West Virginia Univ. undergraduate student David Narkevic was poring through stellar data collected by the Parkes radio dish in Australia. What Narkevic stumbled upon would leave astronomers scratching their heads for years following. A powerful radio burst, estimated at originating some 1.6 billion light-years away, was picked up. According to New Scientist, the burst released energy akin to what the sun produces in a month in a manner of milliseconds. Since then, scientists have detected 16 Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). Now, an international team of scientists have linked FRBs with a highly magnetized, gas-filled region of space. “We now know that the energy from this particular burst passed through a dense magnetized field shortly after it formed,” said Univ. of British Columbia astronomer Kiyoshi Masui, the lead author of the study published in Nature. Read more http://www.rdmag.com/articles/2015/12/mysterious-radio-wave-coil-passing-through-space
