Astronomers may be closing in on source of mysterious fast radio bursts

Pulses may be from a neutron star cocooned by a strong magnetic field - though experts are not ruling out more unorthodox explanations such as alien ships

Astronomers appear to be closing in on the source of enigmatic radio pulses emanating from space that have become the subject of intense scientific speculation.

Previous candidates for the origin of the fleeting blasts of radiation - known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs - have included exploding stars, the reverberations of weird objects called cosmic strings or even distant beacons from interstellar alien spaceships.