Mysterious flashes of radio waves from space might be caused by interstellar asteroids and comets crashing into neutron stars.

Astronomers detected the first fast radio burst (FRB) in 2007, and several thousand have since been found. They are thought to come from neutron stars, the ultra-dense cores left behind after some stars explode as supernovae, but exactly what causes them is unclear.

The favoured explanation for FRBs is that they…