Astronomers have discovered strange new objects that work differently than previously observed. The hope is that the sources provide much needed insight into the origins of the mystical space signals that have been baffling experts over the past few years.
A team of researchers, led by astronomers at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), in Australia, discovered an object known as Askap J1832-0911 using the Askap Radio telescope.
This suggests that it belongs to an object of a recently discovered class called Long Period Transient (LPT), which emits radio pulses abnormally long and at normal intervals. Since the LPT signal was first detected by ICRAR astronomers in 2022, only 10 of these objects have been documented. statement From the organization.
Astronomers are trying to figure out exactly what LPT is and why it exhibits such strange behavior. In March, it appeared there would be a new break when the research was conducted. link The LPT pulses into a binary star system consisting of white dwarfs and red d-stars, but J1832-0911 turns out to be particularly distinctive. While Askap Radio Telescope was observing it, NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory happened to be looking at the same sky. This revealed that objects in the Milky Way, about 15,000 light years from Earth, are also sending X-ray pulses.
Detecting X-ray emissions from Askap J1832-0911 “I felt like I was finding a needle in the haystack,” said Ziteng (Andy) Wang, an astronomer at ICRAR’s Curtin University division. “Askap Radio Telescope has a wide field view of the night sky, but Chandra only observes a small portion of it. So we were fortunate that Chandra observed the same area of the same night sky at the same time.”
This is the first time X-ray ejection has been observed from LPT. J1832-0911 simultaneously emits radio waves and x-rays at a 44-minute interval for a period of 2 minutes, “showing unique and new, explanation-needed properties among known galactic objects. Nature.
Although further research is needed to uncover the essence of J1832-0911, Wang and his colleagues have some initial ideas about what it is.
“skap [J1832-0911] It could be a magnetor (a dead star nucleus with a strong magnetic field),” he said. Simultaneous pulses of radio waves and X-rays observation From the previous magnet.
Alternatively, “it could be that one of the two is a pair of stars in the binary system, a highly magnetized white dwarf (low-mass star at the end of evolution),” Wang added. In this scenario, it was before Documentation– The interaction of the rapidly rotating, magnetized white d star with its companions causes the system to emit pulses ranging from x-rays to radio waves, ranging from electromagnetic spectrum.
However, according to Wang and his colleagues, neither of these possibilities can fully explain what they observed from J1832-0911. Therefore, this finding may indicate that some new physics are being done, or that astronomers need to tune existing models of stellar evolution.
Now, many searches for these strange objects are turned on. “Finding one such object suggests the existence of more,” says Nandarea, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) in Spain and a co-author of the Institute of Catalonia Space Research (IEEC) in Spain. She said the discovery of J1832-0911’s temporary X-ray emissions “opens up fresh insights” into the mystical nature of LPT.
