Abstract

A new class of dispersed radio bursts have been reported with the Parkes 64m radio telescope by Thornton et al. (2013) as part of a largescale survey for pulsars and fast transients. If the dispersion measures of the bursts are interpreted in the context of the standard galactic and cosmological models the bursts would originate from cosmological distances making them a powerful probe of the ionised intergalactic medium. In this paper we briefly review the evidence for the bursts, their potential link to the "Perytons" reported by Burke-Spolaor et al. (2011) and on eorts to refurbish the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope to find bursts more frequently.