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Only one repeating fast radio burst has been localized, to an irregular dwarf galaxy; now another is found to come from a star-forming region of a nearby spiral galaxy.

The fast radio burst FRB 20200120E is shown to originate from a globular cluster in the galaxy M81, and may be a collapsed white dwarf or a merged compact binary star system.

Analysis of the pulse profile of a fast radio burst showed sub-second periodicity, providing evidence for a neutron-star origin of the event and favouring emission arising from the magnetosphere.

Pulsar timing measurements show a mass ratio of about 0.8 for the double neutron-star system PSR J1913+1102, and population synthesis models indicate that such asymmetric systems represent 2–30% of merging binaries.

Measurements of an intense radio burst from a Galactic magnetar provide evidence that magnetars are the probable source of some fast radio bursts.

Magnetars sometimes exhibit mysterious ‘glitches’, during which angular momentum is transferred between the star’s outer and inner crusts, and involving a sudden spin-up of the star; here X-ray timing observations reveal a sudden spin-down, or ‘anti-glitch’ in a magnetar.

Polarimetric observations of the repeating fast radio burst source FRB 121102 suggest that the bursts may originate from a neutron star in the extreme magneto-ionic environment of an accreting massive black hole or supernova remnant.

For FRB 121102, 1,652 burst events are detected over 47 days, with a peak burst rate of 122 per hour, a bimodal burst rate energy distribution, and no periodicity or quasi-periodicity.

A periodicity of roughly 16 days is detected for the fast radio burst 180916.J0158+65, suggesting that the burst arises from a periodically modulated mechanism instead of a cataclysmic or sporadic process.

Subarcsecond localization of the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102 shows that its source is co-located with a faint galaxy with a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus, or a previously unknown type of extragalactic source.

Observations of repeated fast radio bursts, having dispersion measures and sky positions consistent with those of FRB 121102, show that the signals do not originate in a single cataclysmic event and may come from a young, highly magnetized, extragalactic neutron star.

Precision timing and multiwavelength observations of a millisecond pulsar in a triple system show that the gravitational interactions between the bodies are strong; this allows the mass of each body to be determined accurately and means that the triple system will provide precise tests of the strong equivalence principle of general relativity.

X-ray pulsations with an average period of 1.37 seconds have been detected from a known ultraluminous X-ray source hitherto thought to be a black hole; the pulsations instead unequivocally identify the source as an accreting magnetized neutron star ten times brighter than any previously known.

The observation of non-uniformly distributed titanium emission in the interior of Cassiopeia A, a core-collapse supernova, is an indicator of asymmetries in the stellar explosion and provides strong evidence for the development of low-mode convective instabilities in such supernovae.

Thirteen fast radio bursts—astrophysical events that last on the order of a millisecond—have been discovered at frequencies as low as 400 megahertz, including only the second known repeating burst.

A second repeating fast radio burst is detected, showing behaviour similar to that of the first, and demonstrating that repeaters are unlikely to be rare.