Star Bursts

A new class of stars called rotating radio transients (RRATs) can be fickle flashers. They are massively compressed neutron stars that intermittently send out bursts of radio waves that can last for as few as two milliseconds with dark gaps lasting as long as three hours. Not only are these outbursts short-lived, in order to detect RRATs astronomers must distinguish the fleeting radio flashes from terrestrial radio interference. Even so, there could be hundreds of thousands of them in the Milky Way.