Connecting the Dots: Fast Radio Bursts and Gravitational Waves

New observations suggest that Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) may be linked to Neutron Star Mergers, the collision of the leftover cores from two massive stars that produce ripples in space time known as gravitational waves. A gravitational wave event known as GW190425 was detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in April 2019 only two and a half hours before a Canadian radio telescope spotted a powerful FRB in the same patch of sky. The researchers calculate a less than 1% chance that this was truly a coincidence, where the events were not really related to each other.