Every 22 minutes, a strange object has been sending a signal to Earth for 38 years
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Every 22 minutes, a strange object has been sending a signal to Earth for 38 years")
A radio signal has been repeating every 22 minutes for 38 years. It is coming from an object that should not exist.space Photograph: (Freepik)
Radio signals emanating from an object located 15,000 light-years away from Earth are going against everything scientists know about pulsars. A strong burst reaches us around every 1,000 seconds, and it is a scientific anomaly.
Since 1988, Earth has been receiving a signal from space that repeats in a strange pattern. GPM J1839-10 emits a radio pulse every 22 minutes, which lasts few seconds to several minutes every time. This is a cosmic anomaly, as the gap between bursts is unexplainable since this is not how radio bursts behave. They are typically shot out by pulsars, the remains of dead stars that spin at unbelievable speeds. They are like lighthouses that dazzle space with intense, millisecond-long flashes. Their high-speed wobble means that they repeat these signals every few fractions of a second to a few seconds. But what scientists noticed about GPM J1839-10 is that it is sending a signal every 1,000 seconds or so. This defies the rules of astrophysics since this means that the signal is being emitted by a slow-moving neutron star. However, a stellar corpse that is moving slowly should not emit strong pulses.
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How is a slow-moving object releasing radio bursts?
GPM J1839-10 is located 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Scutum. The signal was discovered by Curtin University in 2022. Archival data from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope and Very Large Array showed that the object has been emitting the signal since 1988. Since then, its pattern has not changed as it continues to release radio bursts every 22 minutes. The length of the pulses can last anywhere between 30 seconds and 5 minutes. Several explanations have been offered for this radio burst. Some believe it could be coming from an ultra-long-period magnetar or possibly a white dwarf pulsar. Whatever this object is, it likely lies at the edge of the "death line" for normal pulsar emission, a threshold after which the emissions should stop.
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What does the discovery of this radio burst mean?
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The discovery of this strange-behaving object has changed the way astronomers think about pulsars and radio signals. To see that something moving so slowly can also generate strong signals has triggered the debate about whether such bodies could be present in the universe. They are reanalysing which types of objects can produce stable, repeating cosmic signals.
