In January 2025, astronomers woke up to an alert of a mysterious event that occurred 2.8 billion light years away from Earth. As such things go, this was fairly close to Earth and was an opportunity for detailed observation of the event’s evolution. It was a powerful burst of X-rays, known as a fast X-ray transient or FXT. This burst was named ‘EP 250108a’, after the Einstein Probe, that’s the EP part, that detected the event. Let’s call it 108a. Just between us… FXTs are generally hard to detect and occur far from the Earth. They only last between a few seconds to a few hours, so the astronomers who discovered 108a got really excited when the alert came, uh, knocking on their door. Soon, a large international team of researchers assembled to study the of these mysterious bursts. We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations. Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at
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