"Kind of creepy for an astronomer": Mysterious object in space emits signals every 18 minutes

Created: 01/29/2022, 06:22

By: Martina Lippl

The Milky Way can be seen in this photo.

The star symbol shows the position of the unknown object in space.

© Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker /ICRAR/Curtin

A celestial object puzzles a research team.

It emits unusual radio waves.

Astronomers have never observed anything like this before.

Curtin - While mapping radio waves in the universe, astronomers accidentally stumbled upon a mysterious space object.

And it's completely unlike anything you've ever seen before.

The strange object in space rotated and emits radio waves three times an hour.

At this moment it is the brightest source of radio waves visible from Earth.

The celestial object looked like a heavenly lighthouse.

Sensational discovery “in our galactic backyard”

Astronomers puzzle over the celestial object with its violent outbursts of energy.

The researchers suspect that it could be a remnant of a collapsed star.

Either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star with a strong magnetic field - or something else entirely.

A study on the March 2018 discovery has now been published in the journal Natur.

Mysterious celestial object amazes researchers

It was kind of creepy to an astronomer because nothing in the sky is known to do that. 

Astrophysicist Dr.

ICRAR's Natasha Hurley-Walker

"This object appeared and disappeared over a few hours during our observations," said astrophysicist Dr.

Natasha Hurley-Walker of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research at Curtin University (ICRAR) in Perth, Australia, in a statement January 27, 2022. She led the team that made the discovery.

"It was totally unexpected.

It was kind of creepy to an astronomer because nothing in the sky is known to do that.

And it's actually quite close to us - about 4,000 light-years away.

It's in our galactic backyard," said the study's lead author.

The mysterious object was discovered by Tyrone O'Doherty in outback Western Australia using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope.

"It's exciting that the source I identified last year turned out to be such a peculiar object," said O'Doherty, now a graduate student at Curtin University.

"The MWA's large field of view and extreme sensitivity are perfect for surveying the entire sky and discovering the unexpected."

Numerous theories about mysterious objects in the universe

Objects that switch on and off in the universe are actually nothing new to astronomers - in astronomy they are called "transients".

"When you study transients, you're observing the death of a massive star or the activity of the remnants it leaves behind," explains ICRAR-Curtin astrophysicist and co-author Dr.

Gemma Anderson.

“'Slow transients' - like supernovae (exploding stars) - can appear over the course of a few days and disappear after a few months.

'Fast transients' - like a kind of neutron star called a pulsar - flash up and down within milliseconds or seconds,” Anderson explains.

But, for Dr.

Anderson said it was really strange to find something that only turned on for about a minute every 18 minutes.

This mysterious new object is incredibly bright, smaller than the Sun, and emitting highly polarized radio waves, according to the scientists. This indicates that the object has an extremely strong magnetic field.

The research team therefore suspects that the unknown celestial body could be a so-called "magnetar with an ultra-long period".

"It's a type of slowly rotating neutron star that was theoretically predicted to exist," explains Dr.

Hurley Walker out.

Even the Australian researcher is surprised that this theoretical prediction comes true.

"No one expected to spot one directly because we didn't expect them to be that bright.

Somehow it converts magnetic energy into radio waves much more effectively than anything we've seen before," says astrophysicist Hurley-Walker.

An artist's impression of what an object might look like if it were a magnetar, an incredibly magnetic neutron star.

© ICRAR

Unusual signals from the universe must continue to be observed

The research team now wants to continue monitoring the object to see if it turns back on.

Hurley-Walker is certain:

"Further discoveries will tell astronomers whether this was a rare, one-off event or a huge new population that we had never noticed before."

Large parts of the universe are still a mystery: Mysterious signals from space reach the earth: radio flashes as an indication of extraterrestrials?