A pulsar is a dead star spinning at breakneck speed, sending out radio pulses like a lighthouse. Usually these pulses arrive right on schedule, but occasionally there are true monsters among them — giant pulses that are thousands of times brighter than normal.
Astronomers spent 174 hours listening to pulsar PSR J1227-4853 with a giant radio telescope in India. This pulsar is special: it alternately speeds up and slows down, switching from one mode to another. And now, for the first time, giant pulses have been caught from such a pulsar—235 of them over the entire observation period.
The flares didn't come randomly but in bursts, as if someone were pressing a button in series. This is very similar to the behavior of mysterious fast radio bursts from distant galaxies. Perhaps these phenomena share a common origin, and studying our pulsar could help unravel the mystery of those distant signals.
The shortest giant pulse lasted just 1.28 microseconds — in that time, light travels less than 400 meters.
In Carl Sagan's novel "Contact," the characters detect an encrypted signal from aliens — astronomers still hope that one day, among such flares, a message will be found.