Robert Reischke

Somewhere deep in space, a radio beacon flashes for a fraction of a second, and then goes dark. Such signals are called fast radio bursts. They come from other galaxies and last from microseconds to milliseconds.

Light from distant galaxies passes through warped space before reaching our telescopes. Massive clumps of matter act like uneven glass: galaxy images get slightly stretched and rotated. This phenomenon is called weak gravitational lensing.