There is a strange celestial body in our galaxy. A mysterious object located 15 thousand light years from the earth, which emits powerful electromagnetic waves in our direction on a regular basis: two minutes in a row, every 44. For these characteristics, it is classified as a so-called long-term radio transient, but has a particularity that makes it unique: Askap J1832-0911-this is the code with which it is known among the astronomers-is in fact the first celestial body of this type. Radio, but also X -rays. A discovery recently described on Nature, which could help shed light on the origin of other mysterious similar signals observed in the sky.
That asakap j1832-0911
Long -term radio transient are celestial objects discovered for the first time in 2022 by the researchers of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research. Since then, a total of 10 have been identified, all characterized by the periodic emission of radio waves that repeats itself at intervals of several tens of minutes, much longer – therefore – of those with which the pulsar emissions are repeated. It has been assumed that they can be magnetar – neutron stars with enormous magnetic fields -, white dwarfs with intense magnetic fields, or binary systems made up of two stars that orbit one around the other. At the moment, however, nobody knows with certainty what it is.
Some of the proposed models provided that X -rays also emitted, but until today, despite the commitment of many research groups, it had never been confirmed. This is therefore the one to make the discovery of Askap J1832-0911 interesting. The object was observed using the ASKAP RADIOTELESCOPIO of the Australian National Scientific Agency Csiro. And the emission of X -rays was confirmed by correlating the radio signals observed by the Australian telescope with the surveys of the NASA Chandra X -ray observatory, which for a lucky coincidence was observing the same part of the sky.
“Discovering that Askap J1832-0911 emitted X-ray was like looking for a needle in a haystack,” explains Zateng Wang, researcher at the Icrar node of Curtin University. “The Askap RadioTelesCopium has a large visual field of the night sky, while Chandra observes only one fraction. So it was a fortune that Chandra observed the same area of the night sky at the same time”.
The discovery will now help to reduce the list of celestial bodies that could hide behind long -term radio transient. In fact, X -rays are much more powerful electromagnetic radiation than radio waves. And any theory proposed to explain the nature of these celestial bodies, from now on, will also have to account for these new extremely energetic emissions.
“None of the proposed theories can perfectly explain what we have observed – concludes Wang – this discovery could indicate a new type of physics, or a new model of star evolution”.