Astronomers watched 35 explosive outbursts from a rare repeating “fast radio burst” (FRB) as it shifted in frequency like a “cosmic slide whistle,” blinking in a puzzling pattern never seen before.
FRBs are millisecond-long flashes of light from beyond the Milky Way that are capable of producing as much energy in a few seconds as the sun does in a year. FRBs are believed to come from powerful objects like neutron stars with intense magnetic fields — also called magnetars — or from cataclysmic events like stellar collisions or the collapse of neutron stars to form black holes. Complicating the FRB picture, a few FRBs are “repeaters” that flash from the same spot in the sky more than once, while the majority burst once and then vanish.
I would like to subscribe to strange space facts. Even though I’ll never get to experience them, it feels cozy somehow just knowing about them.
What would ‘nothing’ (like in those voids) feel like, I wonder?
Like normal space, but dark and completely empty of anything except trace gasses. And given just how far away any galaxy is, I’d wager those trace gasses are extra sparse.
If Firefly is to be believed, when faced with that much nothing, some folk go mad.