44 minutes apart, 2 minutes every time: Something from deep space is sending signals to Earth

Astronomers are intrigued by the presence of a cosmic object far away in space that releases radio waves and X-rays for two minutes straight, every 44 minutes. It has been named ASKAP J1832- 0911, but no one knows what it is. The flashing signals were picked up by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory.

The discovery of these strange signals is so weird that scientists behind the finding think that this cosmic mystery could unlock new physics, something that has never been explored before. The NASA and ASKAP revelation has been published in the journal Nature.

Lead author of the study, astronomer Andy Wang of the Curtin University in Perth, Australia, said in a statement, "This object is unlike anything we have seen before."

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A strange object in deep space is emitting radio signals

What they do know is that ASKAP J1832- 0911 is a long-period transient (LPT). These objects are an extremely rare astrophysical event and sweep space with beams of radio waves like cosmic lighthouses. It was first discovered in 2022, and only 10 LPTs have been documented to date.

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The researchers tried to solve the mystery by trying to fit the object into two known groups of cosmic entities. Wang thinks it could be a "magnetar (the core of a dead star with powerful magnetic fields), or it could be a pair of stars in a binary system where one of the two is a highly magnetised white dwarf (a low-mass star at the end of its evolution)."

Magnetar or binary system? None of them

However, he says, even these theories do not explain what is happening in the case of this object. "This discovery could indicate a new type of physics or new models of stellar evolution," he said.

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The usual suspects of radio signals are pulsars, which are a result of neutron stars. The signals emitted last a few seconds or milliseconds. However, LPTs are different because, unlike pulsars, they emit pulses every few minutes or hours apart. Scientists are still working to understand the reason behind such long and regular intervals.

The scientists first found the object using the ASKAP telescope. They later turned to the Chandra X-ray observatory and confirmed what they were seeing. This was the first time an LPT in X-rays has been detected.

Second author Nanda Rea, an astrophysicist at the Catalan Institute for Space Studies in Spain, thinks that if there is one such object out there, there must be many more.