Future observations

Searching for fast radio bursts has become a priority for current and future radio
observatories. "The Effelsberg radio telescope has great potential for detecting many of these bursts," concludes Laura Spitler. "We are sure that there are bursts to be found in archival data from from radio pulsar surveys at Effelsberg, and currently we are working hard to implement a system that will detect bursts in real time. Real-time detection is an important step forward as it enables follow-up observations with facilities at other observing bands, which is crucial to understanding this mystery."

Future instruments, such as the Square Kilometre Array and its pathfinders, promise to be efficient FRB detectors that will vastly expand the knowledge of that phenomenon.

The research was supported by grants from the European Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Nature et technologies, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, among others.

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The Arecibo Observatory is operated by SRI International in alliance with Ana G. Méndez-Universidad Metropolitana and the Universities Space Research Association, under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (AST-1100968).

The data were processed on the ATLAS cluster of the Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik/Albert-Einstein Institut, Hannover, Germany.