Final 12 months, astronomers made an intriguing discovery: a radio sign in area that switched on and off each 18 minutes.
Astronomers count on to see some repeating radio indicators in area, however they often blink on and off far more rapidly. The most typical repeating indicators come from pulsars, rotating neutron stars that emit energetic beams like lighthouses, inflicting them to blink on and off as they rotate in direction of and away from the Earth.
Pulsars decelerate as they become older, and their pulses grow to be fainter, till ultimately they cease producing radio waves altogether. Our unusually sluggish pulsar might greatest be defined as a magnetar—a pulsar with exceedingly advanced and highly effective magnetic fields that would generate radio waves for a number of months earlier than stopping.
Sadly, we detected the supply utilizing information gathered in 2018. By the point we analysed the information and found what we thought may be a magnetar it was 2020, and it was not producing radio waves. With out extra information, we have been unable to check our magnetar idea.
Nothing New Below the Solar
Our Universe is huge, and thus far each new phenomenon we’ve found has not been distinctive. We knew that if we regarded once more, with well-designed observations, we had an excellent likelihood of discovering one other long-period radio supply.
So, we used the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope in Western Australia to scan our Milky Manner galaxy each three nights for a number of months.
We didn’t want to attend lengthy. Nearly as quickly as we began wanting, we discovered a brand new supply, in a special a part of the sky, this time repeating each 22 minutes.
Finally, the second we had been ready for. We used each telescope we might discover, throughout radio, X-ray, and optical gentle, making as many observations as potential, assuming it might not be energetic for lengthy. The pulses lasted 5 minutes every, with gaps of 17 minutes between. Our object regarded lots like a pulsar, however spinning 1,000 occasions slower.
Hiding in Plain Sight
The true shock got here after we searched the oldest radio observations of this a part of the sky. The Very Massive Array in New Mexico, United States, has the longest-running archive of information. We discovered pulses from the supply in information from yearly we regarded—the oldest one in an commentary made in 1988.
Observing over three many years meant we might exactly time the pulses. The supply is producing them like clockwork, each 1,318.1957 seconds, give or take a tenth of a millisecond.
Based on our present theories, for the supply to be producing radio waves, it needs to be slowing down. However in line with the observations, it’s not.
In our article in Nature, we present that the supply lies “beneath the loss of life line,” which is the theoretical restrict of how neutron stars generate radio waves; this holds even for fairly advanced magnetic subject fashions. Not solely that, but when the supply is a magnetar, the radio emission ought to solely be seen for a couple of months to years—not 33 years and counting.
So after we tried to unravel one drawback, we by accident created one other. What are these mysterious repeating radio sources?
What About ET?
After all, it’s very tempting at this level to achieve to extraterrestrial intelligence as an possibility. The identical factor occurred when pulsars have been found: astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell and her colleagues, who discovered the primary pulsar, nicknamed it “LGM 1,” for “Little Inexperienced Males 1.”
However as quickly as Bell and her colleagues made additional detections, they knew it couldn’t be aliens. It could be extremely unlikely for thus many related indicators to be coming from so many alternative components of the sky.
The pulses, much like these of our supply, contained no info, simply “noise” throughout all frequencies, similar to pure radio sources. Additionally, the power necessities to emit a sign in any respect frequencies are staggering: you’ll want to use, effectively, a neutron star.
Whereas it’s tempting to attempt to clarify a brand new phenomenon this fashion, it’s a little bit of a cop out. It doesn’t encourage us to maintain pondering, observing, and testing new concepts. I name it the “aliens of the gaps” method.
Luckily, this supply continues to be energetic, so anybody on this planet can observe it. Maybe with inventive follow-up observations, and extra evaluation, we’ll have the ability to remedy this new cosmic thriller.
This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the unique article.
Picture Credit score: The Worldwide Centre for Radio Astronomy Analysis
