Astronomers Spooked By Mysterious Object Discovered In Our Milky Way Galaxy
The discovery was made using a telescope in the Western Australian outback dubbed the Murchison Widefield Array.
Astronomers in Australia have discovered a unique spinning object in the Milky Way that literally spooked them when they came across it for the first time, according to a report by AFP.
Representational Image: NASA
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The object was discovered by a university student while working on his undergraduate thesis. It released a huge burst of radio energy three times every hour, with the pulse coming every 18.18 minutes like clockwork.
The discovery was made using a telescope in the Western Australian outback dubbed the Murchison Widefield Array. According to Natasha Hurley-Walker, who discovered the object, even though there are objects that turn on and off at regular intervals, the newly-discovered object¡¯s frequency every 18.18 minutes has never been seen before.
The discovery was ¡°kind of spooky for an astronomer¡±, said Natasha as there is nothing known in the sky that¡¯s capable of doing this.
Researchers are now working to understand what they¡¯ve stumbled upon. They do know a few things to boot -- it's about 4,000 light-years away from Earth, it¡¯s really bright and it possesses a strong magnetic field.
But this isn¡¯t enough. Natasha states that even with all the maths, it doesn¡¯t really explain how it¡¯s able to emit such a radio wave every twenty minutes -- theoretically it shouldn¡¯t have that much power.
NASA
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The object could be an ultra-long period magnetar -- something that has been theorised but never seen before. Natasha feels it could also be a white dwarf -- remains of a collapsed star but the chances of that happening are unusual too as there is only one known white dwarf pulsar known to man and it isn¡¯t as powerful. She states the possibility that it could be an entirely new type of object.
Hurley-Walker has also ruled out the possibility that it could be aliens as the signal was observed across a wide range of frequencies, indicating it¡¯s a natural process and not an artificial sign.
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