Studying earthquakes has revealed much about our planet’s origin and features, and scientists use the same techniques to study seismic activity on other terrestrial objects in the solar system that quake. However, planets and moons aren’t the only things that experience tremors — stars also quake, and their activity could possibly answer some unexplained mysteries.

The radio telescope at the Parkes Observatory, Australia, detected a bright, intense flash in the sky almost 15 years ago, which has since been dubbed Fast Radio Bursts or FRBs. Over the last decade, researchers have observed hundreds of blinking radio pulses emitted from the same source, with some hypothesizing that neutron stars and starquakes could be causing these powerful radio wave pulses.

When a massive star runs out of fuel, it collapses under its weight and explodes in a brilliant supernova, leaving behind a neutron star whose structure almost resembles Earth’s. Neutron stars are the densest thing in the universe and are about 1.5 times the size of our sun but squeezed into a radius of only a few miles — imagine the Himalayas in a shoebox.

A neutron starquake might be responsible for FRBs as the phenomenon lasts a few milliseconds, suggesting their source is small, and the energy patterns collected from repeating FRBs are comparable to what an earthquake produces. Researchers will need more data before verifying this hypothesis, but it appears neutron starquakes might be responsible for at least some, if not all, FRBs.