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Because they appear randomly over the sky and because of the relatively narrow field of view of most radio telescopes, only a couple of dozen have been observed since the initial discovery. The task of spotting them is akin to spotting fireflies in a dark forest while looking through a drinking straw.
Uncertainty remains regarding their source. The bursts could come from neutron stars as they collapse and become black holes; from evaporating black holes; from mergers of neutron stars; or from flares from stars with powerful magnetic fields called magnetars.
The quest to discover the true nature of FRBs continues on a number of fronts, including the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), an innovative radio telescope in B.C. that scans the entire northern sky once every day. Compared to a radio telescope that observes only a small patch of the sky at any time, CHIME is a powerful tool with which to discover the elusive and unpredictable FRBs.
At U of T Astro:
Recent U of T Astro research: