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A newly discovered, but still mysterious, radio signal coming from the far reaches of space, repeating itself every hour, has scientists baffled.
The discovery team frankly stated that it was “like nothing astronomers have seen before.” According to researchers Manisha Kalb and Emil Link.
“We can’t quite explain what’s going on here.”
The total transmission time of this signal was recorded at 53.8 minutes. This is “by far the longest” ever recorded.
It comes from a distance of 4.85 kiloparsecs, according to their data. Recently published in Nature Astronomy.
Given that a normal orbit is 191,73,501,441,011 miles, the source is very far from Earth.
The unusually repetitive speed of light bursts appears in a “flashing” pattern in a series of different pulses on a nearby clock. They range from 370 milliseconds to up to 50 seconds in real time, some long and bright and others fast and weak.
Unfortunately for my fans The hit novel was turned into the Netflix show ‘The Three Body Problem’ Where the universe “winks” to a supernatural world through a nocturnal signal, this scenario is closer to Earth.
“It’s probably a very unusual neutron star,” Caleb and Link added, and they can’t rule out other possibilities.
“Similar patterns have been seen in neutron stars, but our current understanding of neutron stars suggests that they should not have such a long period.”
The signal was first found by the ASKAP J1935+2148 telescope — the numbers reflect the location it points to in space — while searching for gamma rays and searching for pulses from a fast radio burst.
“We don’t know how long ASKAP J1935+2148 has been emitting radio signals, as radio astronomy surveys don’t typically look for objects with long time periods.”
If it’s not a neutron star, signs point to a white dwarf star — “an Earth-sized ember of a burned-out star that has exhausted its fuel” — as the second most likely source.
It could also be part of a system in which a neutron star or white cloud star orbits another star that cannot be seen.
“This object may prompt us to reconsider our decades-long understanding of neutron stars or white dwarfs, particularly how they emit radio waves and what their clusters look like within our galaxy.”