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A Polygraph for Flashes: How the Pincus–Lyapunov Diagram Uncovers FRBs

Original: "Fast radio bursts, magnetars and earthquakes: their "family feud"?"
arXiv:2606.01855v1 · 2026-06-01 · CC BY · ⏱ 1 min · High Energy
Fast radio bursts have carved out a distinct niche on the 'stochasticity–chaos' diagram, standing out from all known cosmic and geophysical phenomena.
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FRB 20240114A is a neutron star generating up to 729 radio bursts per hour. On the Pincus–Lyapunov diagram, its rhythm appears as memoryless white noise (PI=0.9, LE=0.1). It’s not the orderly pulsations of a pulsar nor the chaos of tectonic plates, but a froth of random discharges. It’s as if we’re listening to a turbulent magnetosphere breaking into a multitude of voices, each with its own unpredictable click.

🎯 The most active repeater, FRB 20240114A, fires up to 12 bursts per second! The total number of recorded bursts exceeds 10,000 — comparable to the stellar population of a small globular cluster. And each such pulse, in milliseconds, releases energy on par with the Sun's output over several days.

🎬 In Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, radio signals from Vega become a bridge to interstellar dialogue. Fast radio bursts, discovered decades later, were also initially suspected to be of artificial origin. Today, scientists lean toward natural, equally fascinating mechanisms, but who knows — perhaps someone’s meaningful whisper hides within the noise?

|\delta(t)| \approx |\delta_0| e^{\lambda t}
The Lyapunov exponent λ determines the rate: positive value means chaos, negative means stability.
d_i = \sqrt{(\text{PI}_i - \text{PI}_0)^2 + (\text{LE}_i - \text{LE}_0)^2}
A measure of how far a given source lies from a typical repeating FRB in the 'stochasticity–chaoticity' space.
Scientists
Adam RiessBrian SchmidtEdwin HubbleGeorges LemaîtreMaarten SchmidtSaul Perlmutter
Tags
neutron star pulsar entropy supernova speed of light Time dilation expansion of the universe galaxy gravitational waves black hole dark matter
Laws
Hubble's lawsecond law of thermodynamicsDoppler effectHawking radiationgravitational lensingprinciple of constancy of the speed of light
Original: arXiv:2606.01855v1 · CC BY · bridge42worlds