Briar Rose Admin
Posts : 134 Join date : 2020-10-20 Age : 64
| Subject: Astronomers Detect Strange Signals We've Never Seen Before Wed Jan 26, 2022 9:21 am | |
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Something in Earth's cosmic neighborhood is emitting weird signals of a kind we've never seen before.
Just 4,000 light-years away, something is flashing radio waves. For roughly 30 to 60 seconds, every 18.18 minutes, it pulses brightly, one of the most luminous objects in the low-frequency radio sky. It matches the profile of no known astronomical object, and astronomers are gobsmacked. They have named it GLEAM-X J162759.5-523504.3.
"This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations," said astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker of the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia.
"That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there's nothing known in the sky that does that. And it's really quite close to us – about 4,000 light-years away. It's in our galactic backyard."
At the moment, they believe it is most likely one of two things, both 'dead' stars: a type of ultra-magnetic neutron star called a magnetar, or, with a smaller likelihood, a highly magnetized white dwarf. If it's the former, it would be the first time we've detected a magnetar with a very long pulsation period, known as an ultra-long period magnetar. More: Astronomers Detect Strange Signals We've Never Seen Before in Our Cosmic Vicinity | |
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