How Astronomers Discovered an Unusual Object Pulsing Radio Waves in Space for Decades (cnn.com) 29
In 2018 a doctoral student spotted "a spinning celestial space object," reports CNN. "The unfamiliar object released giant bursts of energy and beamed out radiation three times per hour."
But that was just the beginning... In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth through radio telescopes, acting like a celestial lighthouse. Researchers thought the phenomenon might be a remnant of a collapsed star — either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star — with a strong magnetic field. Or perhaps the object was something else entirely... "We were stumped," said Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker, senior lecturer at the Curtin University node of ICRAR, in a statement. "So we started searching for similar objects to find out if it was an isolated event or just the tip of the iceberg." The team observed the sky using the Murchison Widefield Array, a radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country in outback Western Australia, between July and September 2022. The scientists discovered an object 15,000 light-years from Earth in the Scutum constellation. The object, dubbed GPM J1839-10, released radio waves every 22 minutes. The bursts of energy lasted up to five minutes.
Astronomers believe it could be a magnetar, or a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that is capable of releasing powerful, energetic bursts. But if the object is a magnetar, it defies description because all known magnetars release energy in a matter of seconds, or a few minutes at the most. A study detailing the discovery was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "This remarkable object challenges our understanding of neutron stars and magnetars, which are some of the most exotic and extreme objects in the Universe," said Hurley-Walker, who was the lead author of the new report...
"Assuming it's a magnetar, it shouldn't be possible for this object to produce radio waves. But we're seeing them. And we're not just talking about a little blip of radio emission. Every 22 minutes, it emits a five-minute pulse of radio wavelength energy, and it's been doing that for at least 33 years. Whatever mechanism is behind this is extraordinary."
The astronomers "searched through the archives of radio telescopes that have been operational for decades," the article points out — and ultimately confirmed the existence of the phenomenon. "It showed up in observations by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India and the Very Large Array in the USA had observations dating as far back as 1988," Hurley-Walker said.
"That was quite an incredible moment for me. I was five years old when our telescopes first recorded pulses from this object, but no one noticed it, and it stayed hidden in the data for 33 years. They missed it because they hadn't expected to find anything like it."
But that was just the beginning... In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth through radio telescopes, acting like a celestial lighthouse. Researchers thought the phenomenon might be a remnant of a collapsed star — either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star — with a strong magnetic field. Or perhaps the object was something else entirely... "We were stumped," said Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker, senior lecturer at the Curtin University node of ICRAR, in a statement. "So we started searching for similar objects to find out if it was an isolated event or just the tip of the iceberg." The team observed the sky using the Murchison Widefield Array, a radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country in outback Western Australia, between July and September 2022. The scientists discovered an object 15,000 light-years from Earth in the Scutum constellation. The object, dubbed GPM J1839-10, released radio waves every 22 minutes. The bursts of energy lasted up to five minutes.
Astronomers believe it could be a magnetar, or a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that is capable of releasing powerful, energetic bursts. But if the object is a magnetar, it defies description because all known magnetars release energy in a matter of seconds, or a few minutes at the most. A study detailing the discovery was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "This remarkable object challenges our understanding of neutron stars and magnetars, which are some of the most exotic and extreme objects in the Universe," said Hurley-Walker, who was the lead author of the new report...
"Assuming it's a magnetar, it shouldn't be possible for this object to produce radio waves. But we're seeing them. And we're not just talking about a little blip of radio emission. Every 22 minutes, it emits a five-minute pulse of radio wavelength energy, and it's been doing that for at least 33 years. Whatever mechanism is behind this is extraordinary."
The astronomers "searched through the archives of radio telescopes that have been operational for decades," the article points out — and ultimately confirmed the existence of the phenomenon. "It showed up in observations by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India and the Very Large Array in the USA had observations dating as far back as 1988," Hurley-Walker said.
"That was quite an incredible moment for me. I was five years old when our telescopes first recorded pulses from this object, but no one noticed it, and it stayed hidden in the data for 33 years. They missed it because they hadn't expected to find anything like it."
Oh, EditorDavid (Score:2)
Isn't this a dupe from about two days ago?
I'm pretty sure something that's been pulsing like this since the 1980s hasn't had any newsworthy changes in a matter of days!
Re:Oh, EditorDavid (Score:5, Funny)
Twenty-two minutes is the pulse rate of the object.
Two days is the pulse rate of the story.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't this a dupe from about two days ago?
I'm pretty sure something that's been pulsing like this since the 1980s hasn't had any newsworthy changes in a matter of days!
Maybe /. is pulsing stories now -- "now", ha. :-)
It's a cosmic VCR (Score:5, Funny)
That's flashing "12:00" :-)
Re:Question (Score:4)
If they just discovered it, how do they know it was pulsing radio waves for decades?
The answer you're looking for? It was hiding where no one bothered to look.
Quite ironic, since that's exactly what you just did. From TFS:
"That was quite an incredible moment for me. I was five years old when our telescopes first recorded pulses from this object, but no one noticed it, and it stayed hidden in the data for 33 years. They missed it because they hadn't expected to find anything like it."
Re: (Score:3)
Am actually surprised that they are not running all the old data they have thru some "repeatability" algorithm every once a while, to see if someone old matches something new.
For all you know there may even be a signal which repeats every decade, and unless you check your old and new data, you may not even notice it.
Re: peating signals (Score:2)
What do you think BBC sitcoms are?
Solve for the equilibrium? (Score:2)
Is the universe not only stranger than thermodynamicists imagine, but stranger than they can imagine?
Re: (Score:2)
I disposed of your argument about this in the dupe thread several days ago, so why bother to repeat your incomprehension here?
Re: Solve for the equilibrium? (Score:4, Funny)
Was that really a dupe story, or are you just being a typical thermodynamicist and twisting reality to suit your zero-sum-assuming agenda?
Re: Solve for the equilibrium? (Score:2)
Can I make an honest, good-faith attempt at answering your query, what is my problem with thermodynamics?
What if thermodynamics is just the product of human hubris? Having completed BombayIIT's ME 203x MOOC, may i say that thermodynamics is commonly used to excuse wasteful industrial practices (for one random example picked from the top of my head): because entropy has to increase, why even try to build recycling into the manufacturing process?
Would you like me to go on? Why does thermodynamics rely on circ
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, didn't my IITBombayx ME209x Thermodynamics make just that point: http://subbot.org/edx/thermody... [subbot.org] ?
But in that same class, didn't they give a justification for temperature ordering that is violated by weather inversions? I.e., they assume layers represent monotonic temperature functions, but doesn't actual observed layers in the atmosphere disobey that assumption?
Also, why is there no equation of state for water? Is it because water violates the law of non-contradiction, in that the triple state allo
Re: (Score:2)
Why shouldn't a reasonable person think it is not just another example of human pretension to knowledge, like epicyclists were so sure that orbits were circles?
Re: Solve for the equilibrium? (Score:2)
Is the acceration of the universe expanding? Where does that energy come from?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you debate-dodging because there are plenty of significant challenges to thermodynamics hiding in plain view, as this post describes? Why am I reminded of kids looking at a globe as late as the 1960s, saying, duh, Africa and South America fit together, while very serious geologists used thermodynamic reasoning to prove conclusively that continents just don't drift?
Re: Solve for the equilibrium? (Score:2)
How many different ways did Aristarchus just not understand epicycles, amirite?
Star Trek: Voyager (Score:2)
Isn't this from their very first episode? A satellite sending bursts of energy to a planet on a regular schedule?