So there's this recently-discovered type of cosmological event called Fast Radio Bursts:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/mysterious-radio-bursts-come-from-outside-our-galaxy/. To sum up, they're different from other radio-producing phenomena mostly in that they're unaccompanied by radiation at other frequencies, unlike supernovae. They also seem to come from a great distance; outside our galaxy entirely seems likely, which would mean they also happened a long time ago.
Now some folks have a theoretical source for FRBs: a neutron star that's
above the mass limit where it should collapse into a black hole, but can't because... (and this makes my geek mind light up until I swear I could read in the dark from the glow behind my eyeballs)
it's spinning so fast centrifugal force overcomes the pull of gravity.
Son of a gamma-ray burster
bitch. Meet the "blitzar":
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/possible-explanation-for-radio-bursts-meet-the-blitzar/The basic idea is, the intense magnetic fields that neutron stars (themselves the remnants of stars that have gone supernova) are known to generate eventually slow the star's spin. In the (theoretical) case of blitzars, that spin is all that's keeping them from collapsing. So when they slow past a certain point, gravity prevails and the star vanishes from the universe, leaving a black hole.
But most of that incredibly strong magnetic field stays behind, suddenly shorn of the body that was generating it. The forces released by the field assuming a new configuration cause a Fast Radio Burst.
Mind you, these objects are quite theoretical; no one's actually observed one. But modeling shows that they're possible.
Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
-J. B. S. Haldane
