Something strange takes place at 15,000 light years from the earth. To this distant kidnapping, somewhere in the scutum of the constellation, an unexplained body stood in space, flashing in both radiographs and radio frequencies once every 44 minutes in a way ever seen by astronomers before. The object could be a white dwarf – a ball the size of an earth which remains after a star has exhausted its nuclear fuel. Or not. It could also be a magnetar – a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field. Unless it is not either.
“Astronomers have examined countless stars with all kinds of telescopes and we have never seen one that acts in this way,” said astronomer Ziteg Wang of Curtin University in Australia, in a press release that accompanied the release of May 28 of an article in Nature describing the object, for which he was the main author. “It’s exciting to see a new type of behavior for stars.”
So what is exactly the mysterious body – which goes according to the ASKAP J1832 technical handle – and what is the frequency of this species of object?
Askap J1832 is in no way unique in the universe in sending energy to stable flashes. Pulsars – neutron stars in retrospective rotation – Do also. But pulsars flash much faster than Askap J1832, of the Milliseconds order in seconds. In 2022, astronomers discovered a type of object known as a long -term transitional, which, like Askap J1832, sent radio wave flashes to the order of tens of minutes. Until now, 10 of such bodies have been found, but no identical to Askap J1832, which is the first to emit X -rays.
In addition, Askap J1832’s emissions have changed over time. During an observation with the Chandra X -ray observatory in NASA orbit in February 2024, the object prodigiously produced X -rays and radio waves. During an observation of follow -up six months later, the radio waves were 1,000 times lower and no x -rays was detected. He was a puzzle.
“We have examined several different possibilities involving neutron stars and white dwarfs, either in isolation or with companions stars,” said co-author Nanda Rea of the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, in a press release. “So far, nothing corresponds exactly, but some ideas work better than others.”
One of these ideas is the magnetar, but that does not correspond precisely, due to the bright and variable radio emissions of Askap J1832. The white dwarf remains a possibility, but in order to produce the amount of energy it makes, Askap J1832 should be in orbit around another body in a formation known as the binary system, and so far, this second body has not been detected. Seen from Earth, Askap J1832 seems to be located in a remnant of supernova, a cloud of hot gas and high energy particles which remains after an aging star has encountered its explosive end. But the authors of the article concluded that the rest is simply in the foreground of the observation field with Askap J1832 in the background, the way in which a earthly cloud can derive on the way to the sun.
Thus, for the moment, the object remains an enigma – one that will be studied later. “Finding a mystery like this is not frustrating,” said Co-author Tong Bao of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, in a press release. “This is what makes science exciting.”
