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The Milky Way continues to present new mysteries through the telescope. An international astronomer team has discovered an objectuntil now unknown, which emits powerful radio bursts with a watchmaker’s precision. But the strangest thing is that we know that they are accompanied by X -rays.
Context. One of the cosmic fashion phenomena in astronomy magazines are transitory long -period radio objects (LPRT), whose understanding is still in diapers. Since 2022 only 10 have been identified, which were overlooked or confused with other celestial objects.
LPRT emit bursts of radio waves periodically, but with much longer intervals (of minutes or hours) than traditional pulsaries, which usually have periods of second or milliseconds.
The progress in radio telescopes has opened a window to the transitory universe that allows astronomers to identify LPRTS more easily. One of the most powerful radio telescopes is the Australian Matrix Askap, which consists of 36 parabolic antennas 12 meters in diameter acting as a single instrument of 4,000 square meters.
Double surprise. Astronomers have just added a new layer of complexity to the world of LPRTS with the discovery of Askap J1832-0911, an object that emits powerful radio wave explosions. Your pulses last two minutes and repeat every 44 minutes and 12 seconds.
The finding is important because it is just the tenth LPRT discovered and places the new object among the 30 most brilliant radio sources in the sky. But the surprise came to cross the data with observations of the NASA X -ray Space Telescope.
Chandra had observed the same area of the night sky at the same time as Askap (what scientists have compared with “finding a needle in a haystack”). The Observatory discovered X -ray emissions from the same point and with the same cycle of 44 minutes and 12 seconds. It is the first time that an LPRT emitting waves of both frequencies.
Collapsed lines. ASKAP J1832-0911 is around 15,000 light years from Earth, in a very populated region of our galaxy. This location greatly hinders its study in other wavelengths, because there are many objects that could be obscuring it, and an immense amount of dust that blocks our line of vision.
Infrared searches have also not yielded results, although hope is put into future observations with the James Webb space telescope. Unlike other LPRTS that seem to “light” and “turn off” intermittently, the object has been active during the 10 months that observation has lasted, although with a variable brightness.
The million dollar question. What exactly is Askap J1832-0911? There are many theories about what type of object could be producing such regular and energy signs. This object is different from everything we have seen before, but researchers do not believe it is an extraterrestrial civilization sending messages because the emission spectra are too broad.
Instead, two main suspects shuffle. The first is an old magnetar: a neutron star with incredibly powerful magnetic fields in his last stage of life, possibly orbited by another star.
The second is an ultra -freeized white dwarf: the remnant of a low -dough star at the end of its evolution, with an exceptionally strong magnetic field and a companion star. But for this theory to fit, the white dwarf would need the most intense magnetic field ever detected in one of its class, surpassing the 5 × 109 gauss.
We know nothing. “Finding such an object suggests the existence of many more”, Nanda Rea saysCo-author of the study and professor of the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) in Spain. “The discovery of its X -ray transitory emission opens new perspectives on its mysterious nature.”
This discovery not only adds a new mystery to the list of things that we do not understand the universe. He also suggests that LPRTS, of which we barely know 10, are more energy than was thought. Hunting to find more objects like this and decipher its origin has only begun.
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