"You have to have your radio telescope pointed at just the right place at just the right time and you can't predict where or when that will be."

Most radio telescopes only see a patch of sky the size of the moon at a given time, meaning the vast majority of FRBs go unseen, Masui said.

That all changed when the CHIME telescope, located at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada, began receiving radio signals in 2018 during its first year of operation.

The stationary radio telescope, called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, detected 535 new fast radio bursts between 2018 and 2019.

This enabled scientists to create the CHIME catalog of fast radio bursts, which was presented Wednesday at the 238th American Astronomical Society Meeting, an event that's occurring virtually.

Not only does the catalog expand on the known number of fast radio bursts, but it also broadens the information available about their locations and properties.

Based on their observations, the researchers believe that single fast radio bursts may have sources that are different from repeating ones.

"With all these sources, we can really start getting a picture of what FRBs look like as a whole, what astrophysics might be driving these events, and how they can be used to study the universe going forward," said Kaitlyn Shin, CHIME member and a graduate student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Physics, in a statement.

"That's what helps us detect FRBs a thousand times more often than a traditional telescope."

The 535 bursts detected by CHIME came from all parts of the sky -- and space.

Based on the information they gathered, the researchers calculated that these bright fast radio bursts likely occur about 800 times per day across the entire sky.

"Because of this, we think that they are going to be the ultimate tool for studying the universe."

Many of these bright radio bursts detected by CHIME traveled from distant galaxies and were likely created by incredibly energetic sources -- but researchers are still trying to determine the exact nature of those sources.