A translator at a meeting is distracted by every rustle in the room, then suddenly dives into a long monologue by the speaker. That's exactly how the fast radio burst source FRB 20240114A behaves: in one hour, its pulses scatter randomly, but over months they line up into a predictable drift.
Over 214 days of observations with the Chinese radio telescope FAST, this object emitted 11,553 bursts. On the most active day, 4.38 hours, there were 3,197—one every five seconds. On such a short timescale, the gaps between bursts are distributed almost randomly. But stretch the observation window to months, and the statistics change: long tails appear, and the burst rate starts to slowly creep up or down.
Previously, some researchers saw pure randomness in repeaters, while others saw long-term memory. Now it's clear: both were right, just looking through different windows. If you observe for less than an hour, you see noise; if you observe for months, you see drift.
The most active observing day yielded 3,197 bursts in 4.38 hours — on average one burst every 5 seconds. This is the highest rate among all known repeating FRBs. For comparison, a typical repeater emits only a few bursts per hour.