Abstract
The minutes-to-hours X-ray outbursts known as fast X-ray transients from outside our Galaxy provide an interesting window into a wide variety of phenomena, including supernova shock breakouts, stable/unstable magnetars, collapsars, and IMBH-WD tidal disruption events. I will review previous and current efforts to characterize samples from Chandra, XMM, and Einstien Probe, discussing what we have learned about their demographics and physics, and what remains to be known.
