The universe is a super vast expanse of not just celestial bodies but hidden mysteries too. As scientists continue to work hard to solve these mysteries, many new and peculiar phenomena keep making their first appearance. Astronomers from Australia have now detected some strange radio waves emanating from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. According to the experts, the energy coming from that signal is unmatched with any of the phenomena that have been studied before, hinting that this can be a novel stellar object.
The object which has been named after its coordinates, ASKAP J173608.2-321635 is emitting waves that are not uniform. One of the lead authors of the study and a doctoral student at the School of Physics in the University of Sydney, Ziteng Wang said that the object has sudden variations in its brightness and the signal randomly goes on and off.
"The strangest property of this new signal is that it has a very high polarisation. This means its light oscillates in only one direction, but that direction rotates with time," he said in a press release.
The team of experts who is studying this new phenomenon tried linking it to the researches and findings from the past. Earlier, the team thought the object to be a pulsar which is a neutron (dead) star with dense type of rapid spinning. The team also thought of the possibility of the object being some sort of star which radiated huge solar flares. But that possibility was ruled out as signals from this object do not match to what the experts expect from such sort of celestial bodies, reported CNN.
Tara Murphy, co-author of the study and a professor at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy and the School of Physics at the University of Sydney said, “This object was unique in that it started out invisible, became bright, faded away and then reappeared. This behaviour was extraordinary.”
The celestial body was first seen during a survey of the sky that was being done through Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder Telescope, ASKAP. The telescope at the Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory in Western Australia works by coordinating 36 dishes together. Subsequent observations were carried out at Parkes Radio telescope in New South Wales MeerKAT telescope South African Radio Astronomy Observatory.
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