Mysterious object unlike anything astronomers have seen before

https://www.icrar.org/repeating-transient/

by signa11 • 4 years ago

144 90 4 years ago

ianai2• 4 years ago

It radiates a signal around every 18 minutes. It sounds like a pulsar. How is it unlike “Mysterious object unlike anything astronomers have seen before”? This being the current title.

adrianN• 4 years ago

It says in the article that pulses from pulsars are usually much shorter than what is detected from this object.

MauranKilom2• 4 years ago

pulses from pulsars are usually much shorter

...and more frequent.

valyagolev• 4 years ago

to continue our idle lazy speculation game “explain the title without really reading”, perhaps it’s just doppler effect…

pizza234• 4 years ago

Gist of the article:

Dr Hurley-Walker said the observations match a predicted astrophysical object called an ‘ultra-long period magnetar’.
“It’s a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically,” she said.
“But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright.
“Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before.”

Trombone122• 4 years ago

The abstract of the article suggests it is a magnetar, which depending on your mood could be counted as a type of pulsar, though it's probably more sensible to label both as types of neutron stars.

By measuring the dispersion of the radio pulses with respect to frequency, we have localized the source to within our own Galaxy and suggest that it could be an ultra-long-period magnetar.

dekhn15• 4 years ago

but... magnetars aren't mysterious or unlike anything astronomers have seen. The most the press release says is that it's brighter or closer than previous ones.

joshuahedlund• 4 years ago

Because the level of "unlike"-ness exists on a spectrum, so the headline can be technically correct while implying a position on the spectrum much farther than it actually is.

colordrops• 4 years ago

Reading the article would dispel your confusion.

BatteryMountain• 4 years ago

Interstellar light house?

rbanffy3• 4 years ago

We can already use pulsars for that, but this one being so unique would be very convenient. OTOH, you won’t be able to make multiple observations in a short period.

blakesterz• 4 years ago

Is this the kind of thing they'll be able to point the James Webb Telescope at and say "Aha, here's what this thing is!" ? I don't know enough about the James Webb Telescope or astronomy to know what it's going to be looking at, but I know it was something about light spectrum or something.

nsilvestri• 4 years ago

No, this is a radio source and JWST is primarily an infrared observatory.

ceejayoz7• 4 years ago

That we've detected a radio source doesn't mean there's not something there in infrared as well, though.

dncornholio• 4 years ago

Think Hubble could do the same since it so close. My basic understanding is James Webb is better suited for ultra deep space observations, because it doesn't care about dust as much.

Trombone122• 4 years ago

No, the reason JWST is better for ultra deep space is because the expansion of the universe redshifts the peak of the light emitted by the really old stars into the IR band. Also it has a bigger mirror so it can see fainter stuff, which things further away tend to be.

walnutclosefarm• 4 years ago

If you're asking whether we could image the actual magnetar (assuming that's what they observed) with JWST, the answer is no. If it's a magnetar, the object itself is less than 100 km in diameter. JWST has an angular resolution of about .1 arc seconds, which at 4000 light years distance means it can resolve things that are billions, not tens, of kilometers (think the size of Pluto's orbit) in extent. The magnetar is probably also dark in the infrared spectrum JWST can see well.

belter• 4 years ago

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04272-x

dekhn15• 4 years ago

"A radio transient with unusually slow periodic emission" sounds a lot better than "MYSTERIOUS OBJECT UNLIKE ANYTHING ASTRONOMERS HAVE SEEN BEFORE" (yes, the PR uses all-caps) to me.

rbanffy3• 4 years ago

Why not a “slowly rotating magnetar” would probably be better.

kseistrup• 4 years ago

You know it's clickbait when you see the word "mysterious" in a headline. Why not simply write "Celestial object unlike anything astronomers have seen before."

robofanatic• 4 years ago

still it's a good read.

tzs• 4 years ago

The original is better than your proposed rewrite.

"Mysterious" does convey useful information. Something can be new but not mysterious.

"Celestial", on the other hand, conveys almost no useful information because generally every object astronomers look at is celestial.

throwhauser• 4 years ago

It actually is mysterious though. Not mentioning the mystery would be click-repellent.

antishatter• 4 years ago

If clickbait gets people reading science why do we care?

dekhn15• 4 years ago

I'll tell you why. I read clickbait about molecular biology when I was a teenager (quite some time ago) and ended up thinking that biology was far more advanced than it really is. it took me decades of training to understand that publicly, scientists are more optimistic and likely to overstate the quality and applicability to their results. It would have helped me a lot if the original articles about gene therapy had said "this is a very risky technology and it's likely it will never be approved because people are terrified of side effects"

louissan• 4 years ago

Yes the World needs more clickbait that takes to actual learning resources, not people-ish articles, property porn and other horrors.

"Is this is the best XXX algorithm in the world?" "I have tried XXX low-level programming language and it's amazing!" "We went to the Science Museum and met XXX" "Top tips to enjoy working late at night on subject XXX and YYY" "Why STEM studies makes you look more sexy than XXX" "15 ways to look good while loving maths & physics" "You won't believe why the Riemann hypothesis was right!" "The 6 thing to do when banish Economics teacher fatigue" "Can't focus on XXX? Try this, it works!"

etc, etc, etc.

postalrat2• 4 years ago

Because "Celestial object unlike anything astronomers have seen before" might be happening every day.

sgustard• 4 years ago

The astronomers quoted in the article used the words "spooky", "unexpected" and "peculiar". It's not like the headline writer went completely off the rails.

kk6mrp• 4 years ago

"Astronomers puzzled by enigma in the sky"

dylan6044• 4 years ago

Astronomers puzzled by object wrapped in mystery inside an enigma in the sky

sandebert• 4 years ago

The astronomers used the word "spooky", so I propose the headline below, for maximum correctness and confusion:

Spooky action at a distance

dylan6044• 4 years ago

It's not that they've seen it before, it's that they haven't heard it like this before. It's almost like someone put the star on 33 1/3 instead of the 78rpm it's meant to be played.

richardfey3• 4 years ago

My proposed title:

Neutron star (or a white dwarf) spotted emitting massive radio bursts thrice every hour

raxxorrax• 4 years ago

But it is peculiar. Since neutron stars inhibit the momentum from their previous lives, they usual spin extremely fast when they collapse into a far smaller state. Magnetars do spin more slowly because of their magnetic field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_braking_(astronomy)

They still usually spin much faster than the newly discovered object. Perhaps someone installed a strong magnet in the near vicinity.

mmettler• 4 years ago

Is it sending primes?

w-m• 4 years ago

At the rate of 1 bit in 18 minutes (assuming to just coding the signal as off/on every period), that's 34.2 years to transmit 1 MB. Without error correction. If its aliens, they're not in a particular rush to transmit the latest weather data.

dylan6044• 4 years ago

But see, you're not thinking as a Vegan. They'd be using higher harmonics to encode much more data than just the one bit. I thought we had all learned this by now! Back to remedial sci-fi for all of you!

akomtu• 4 years ago

The period - 1080 seconds - is interesting by itself. If I were an alien and wanted to broadcast some important number, an ultra stable magnetar would be my top choice.

bencollier49• 4 years ago

Oh, not another one!

ck2• 4 years ago

If a civilization was exponentially more advanced yet still didn't have FTL travel (or FTL communication) might they harness such a galaxy-level radio signal as a beacon?

All you'd have to do at that point is figure out how to make it blink in a pattern by intermittently blocking it

Might take centuries for others to receive but it could be a historical record.

dylan6044• 4 years ago

More realistically, wouldn't they be better used as locating beacons? Find the magnetar with a frequency of 18mins18s, then turn left and go just a few light years until you reach Sagitarius A*. you can't miss it!

omnicognate• 4 years ago

HN discussion on this is entirely about aliens, clickbait and pink ducks (for some reason). Come on people.

Given this thing is only 4000 light years I way I'd like to know if there's any chance of it causing some kind of apocalypse at some point. I guess if it's a magnetar the gamma-ray-burst-producing event in its life is already past?

varelse2• 4 years ago

Anything beyond ~50 light years is out of range.

TheOtherHobbes• 4 years ago

Potentially a direct hit from a GRB few kiloparsecs away would cause issues, but for extinction level events the GRB needs to be a lot closer.

This doesn't seem to be a GRB. It's more likely to be a magnetar, and at this distance there's nothing at all to worry about.

vanusa• 4 years ago

And yet, with a clickbait title we've seen 10,000 times before

mabbo• 4 years ago

The object was discovered by Curtin University Honours student Tyrone O’Doherty using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in outback Western Australia and a new technique he developed.
“It’s exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object,” said Mr O’Doherty, who is now studying for a PhD at Curtin.

That must be exciting, to make a cool discovery like this during your undergrad.

albert_e• 4 years ago

sounds like the opening of the movie DONT LOOK UP!

mmacvicarprett• 4 years ago

It is just an alien intergalactic VOR

splittingTimes• 4 years ago

Per Wikipedia: "The Earth and most of the planets in the Solar System, as well as the Sun and other stars, all generate magnetic fields through the motion of electrically conducting fluids."

So how does a Neutron star generate these intense and even twisted magnetic fields?

What irritates me:

1. During NS formation the electrons are pressed into the protons, creating neutrons. So there is no electric charges left.

2. A NS is so dense, that the neutrons form a closest packing of equal sphereres. There is no room for movement of any kind of "layers" inside a NS.

===

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field

0xdeadb00f• 4 years ago

A team mapping radio waves in the Universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour

First line of the article. Is it really that constant? Every 3hrs? If so could this possibly be a sign of intelligent life? I mean most likely not, I'm not getting my hopes up.

A while back I read on here a commenter saying that if they were to try and see if there's intelligent life out there, they'd release a signal periodically at fixed intervals - try to make it as "regular" as possible - so that intelligent beings would hopefully notice the pattern.

Mysterious object unlike anything astronomers have seen before

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