Talk:List of fast radio bursts

Why do we have the two comoving distance columns

• Why do we have the two comoving distance columns ? I'm not saying it's a bad idea - just asking.
• Is the maximum estimated distance something often reported in the FRB report articles ? How is it estimated ? Is it from the observed DM, subtracting the estimated DM from that direction in our own galaxy ? ie the DM_excess reported in frbcat.org. frbcat also lists D_comoving under derived parameters and a D_luminosity (both in Gpc not Gly) - frbcat has ref for their derivation.
• Most of the observed distances are well below the estimated distances - what is the implication of this ? For FRB 190523 the observed distance is greater than the estimated max - has this been discussed in any source ?
• Could these distances be described in this list article, and maybe in the FRB article itself ? - Rod57 (talk) 12:34, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

@Rod57: You're correct in your assumption, the comoving distance is estimated from the observed DM excess and calculated with FRBcat. The reason the distances are the "maximum" estimated distance is because there's actually two unknowns here- both the unknown amount of DM created by the space between the source and us, and the unknown amount of DM created by the object's host galaxy. I.e. if the object didn't have a host galaxy, for some reason, the estimated distance would be the same as the first distance column. However, since the amount of obscuring dust in the object's galaxy is unknown, we can really only get an upper limit. As for why some objects are actually further than the estimated DM excess- while we have a large amount of pulsars to measure the DM in our own galaxy, the DM rate of intergalactic space is very poorly known. In fact, fast radio bursts are really the only method we have of estimating it observationally. Sources whose actual distance are higher than the estimated distance are in areas of space where the DM rate is actually lower than predicted, causing distant bursts to not be dispersed as much as expected for their distance. I'm not sure how that could be incorporated into the main article, but I imagine it could be worth mentioning. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 06:24, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Repeaters

Of the bursts that repeat, I was hoping to learn how often they repeat (e.g., once every 11 months? once every seven minutes?), and maybe even how regularly. Disappointing that the table has no information on that. 2601:281:D47F:B960:F485:5579:2E39:B0A3 (talk) 13:48, 24 February 2022 (UTC)