bout 4,000 light-years from Earth, an astral entity
released a large flash of radiation three times an hour, each for a minute at a
time, taking researchers by surprise.
An artist’s impression of what the object might look
like if it’s a magnetar. Magnetars are incredibly magnetic neutron stars, some
of which sometimes produce radio emission. Known magnetars rotate every few
seconds, but theoretically, “ultra-long period magnetars” could rotate much
more slowly.
“This object was appearing and disappearing over a
few hours during our observations,” said lead author Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker
in a press release. “That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for
an astronomer because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that.
About every 20 minutes, the object becomes one of
the brightest radio sources in the sky. Likely a neutron star or a white dwarf
— the dense remains of formers stars — the object also emits highly-polarized
radio waves. The study was published in Nature Jan. 27, 2022.
If that wasn’t interesting enough, Hurley-Walker
also suspects the object also might have a high amount of magnetic energy which
would put it in the running to be an ‘ultra-long period magnetar.’
Bridging the gap
Magnetars are the most magnetic objects in the
universe. Their magnetic fields are over a thousand trillion times stronger
than Earth’s. Like their less magnetic cousins, pulsars, magnetars are known
for emitting bursts of radiation. But where pulsars tend to be reliable with
their pulses, magnetars are a bit more erratic. Some of this erratic behavior
can be seen in fast radio bursts (FRB), sudden and intense explosions of
radiation, which have been traced back to magnetars.
But how young magnetars reach the stage of being
able to produce FRBs is a mystery. One solution is ultra-long period magnetars,
which could bridge the gap.
“It’s a type of slowly spinning neutron star that
has been predicted to exist theoretically,” said Hurley-Walker. “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.”
These transients — objects that turn on and off —
are not new to researchers, however transients can often be described as slow,
appearing over a few days and disappearing within months, or fast, which appear
for a brief second at a time. This strange object did neither, emphasizing its
uniqueness.
According to Hurley-Walker, "more detections
will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new
population we'd never noticed before."
0 Comments