2:30-3:00 pm

For more than a decade, millisecond-long flashes seen in radio telescopes have mystified astronomers. We had reason to believe that these so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) were coming from outside our galaxy, and if this were true, they must be caused by some very energetic phenomenon. However, until recently the small field-of-view of most radio telescopes has limited burst discoveries, and thus prevented us from studying them in detail. I will describe how CHIME, a new digitally-driven radio telescope, is discovering FRBs at an unprecedented rate, enabling us to finally gain insight into this mysterious phenomenon.