Since 2007, astronomers have known about a type of interstellar phenomenon known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs for short. They are luminous emissions of radio waves that can produce 100 million times more energy than the sun in just a few milliseconds. Until recently, they have only been seen in our own outer galaxies. But this past April, astronomers were in the galaxy (by a MIT News).
When astronomers discovered FRBs more than a decade ago, physicists hypothesized that they could produce a special kind of powerful magnetic field out of a special class of neutron stars called magnets. Neutron stars, if you need a refresher, are the remnants of a star that has gone supernovae and seen its own original collapse. It turns out that those suspicions are justified. By the end of April, astronomers had recorded a series of FRBs that they originated from SGR 1935 + 2154, which is about 30,000 light-points from a magnetic Earth. The radio telescope that got the best glimpse of the event, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIM) did so on the edge of its range, causing some uncertainty about the identity of the source.
