Australian scientists have discovered a source of strange repetitive radio pulses in space
Miscellaneous / / January 28, 2022
By cosmic standards, it's within reach.
PhD student at Curtin University in Western Australia, Tyrone O’Doherty, while mapping radio waves in the universe, discovered in 2020 Mysterious object unlike anything astronomers have seen before mysterious pulses of energy that some cosmic body emitted for 30-60 seconds every 18.18 minutes. The strange object then disappeared from the field of view of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope, then reappeared, becoming the brightest source of radio waves in the study area.
Colleagues O'Doherty at first did not pay attention to the find. But then, after studying the behavior of the object more carefully, they came to the conclusion that this has not yet been seen.
It was very unexpected and creepy.
Natasha Harley-Walker
Astrophysicist, Curtin University International Center for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, Australia
There are quite a lot of transient sources of radio waves in space that change brightness, periodically appearing and disappearing from the field of view. Their pulsation is predominantly the death of massive stars or the activity of their remnants. But before, scientists have not observed objects that can actively emit energy for a whole minute.
Astrophysicists have suggested that O'Doherty discovered a magnetar with a very long pulsation period. It can be a neutron star or a white dwarf (the collapsed core of a star) with a super-powerful magnetic field.
Magnetars, like pulsars, rotate, emitting rays. But for the former, the rotation period is up to 10 seconds, for the latter, usually no more than a second. An unusual magnetar's beam can cross Earth's line of sight, at which point it becomes the brightest radio source in the sky.
The researchers also found that the object was in the active phase in January 2018, but in March the intensity of its radio emission was seriously reduced. The magnetic field of an unusual magnetar turned out to be very strong and ordered - the light from it is polarized by 90%.
Astrophysicists have suggested that this magnetar is evidence of extreme processes in space that have not yet been studied. They also noted that it is located 4 thousand km. light years from Earth.
On a galactic scale, this is the equivalent of a backyard.
Natasha Harley-Walker
Astrophysicist, Curtin University International Center for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, Australia
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For 10 years in IT, I tried a lot: I worked as a system administrator and tester, I wrote in a dozen different languages programming, led the computer department of the editorial office of a printed newspaper and led news feeds high-tech portals. I can patch KDE2 for FreeBSD - and tell you in detail about all the nuances of this process. I dream about homemade R2-D2 and space flight.