The Sky at Night explores the world of transient phenomena. It used to be thought that the universe operates on timescales of millions or even billions of years, where change happens with imperceptible slowness. But now a whole catalogue of events have been discovered that happen over much shorter times - seconds or even milliseconds. And these sudden, transient occurrences are among the most mysterious, powerful and destructive events in the universe. The programme hears more about the explosive event that created the recently-detected gravitational wave - the collision of two neutron stars. Chris Lintott spends 24 hours at the SWIFT space telescope base in Leicester in an attempt to detect a gamma ray burst, the most powerful and extreme short-term event known. Maggie Aderin-Pocock meets the team searching for the mysterious, barely understood transient phenomena called fast radio bursts. And Lucie Green reveals that some short-term phenomena can occur much closer to home too.
