Astronomers were mapping radiowaves in March 2018 when they found a mysterious object in space that had never been seen before. MailOnline reported that the "spooky" cosmic object is said to be 4,000 light-years away from Earth and could be either a neutron star or a white dwarf, which is a collapsed core of a star with an ultra-powerful magnetic field known as a magnetar.
The object spins through space and sends out a beam of radiation, which makes it one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Observations of this object showed that it releases a giant burst of energy three times per hour.
Spooky Cosmic Object Could Be A New Type of Star With Ultra-Powerful Magnetic Field
Astronomers Found a Disappearing Object in Space For the First Time
The mysterious object in space sends a beam of radiation visible to Earth which is one of the brightest radio signals they detected, Science Daily reported. Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astrophysicist at the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research at Curtin University, said that the object keeps on appearing and disappearing over a few hours, which is completely unexpected.
Astronomers had no idea about the object and described it as something "spooky." In addition, it is so close to Earth at only 4,0000 light-years away and is in the same galaxy.
Astronomers call objects in space that turn on and off transients and studying them means watching the death of a massive star or the activity of its remnants, says study co-author and astrophysicist Dr. Gemma Anderson.
She said that slow transients, like a supernova, could appear for a few days and disappear after a few months. On the other hand, fast transients, such as a pulsar, flash on and off for milliseconds or seconds.
Curtin University Honours student Tyrone O'Doherty discovered this mysterious object using a new technique he developed with the help of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in outback Western Australia while mapping radiowaves. Now a Ph.D. candidate, O'Doherty said that the object is an exciting new source of radio waves that out to be very peculiar.
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Mysterious Cosmic Object Could Be the Theoretical Neutron Star
Researchers said that the new and incredibly bright object is detected for only a minute every 18 minutes. CNN reported that observations match up with the definition of an ultra-powerful magnetar, which usually turns on for a second. However, this mysterious object is turned on much longer.
Hurley-Walker said that the slow-spinning neutron star was only theorized before and has never been seen. More so, nobody has ever expected to directly detect one neutron star because theories did not predict it to be this bright. She noted that the object effectively converts its magnetic energy into radio waves that have never been observed before.
The team is still monitoring the object and will continue to do so until it turns back on to gain more insights. In the meantime, they are looking for a similar object in space that will help them understand its behavior. The more detections of a similar object they have, the more they know whether it could be a rare or one-time cosmic event or a sign of a new population of stars humans failed to see before.
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