Latest news with #LPTs
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Newly discovered 'cosmic unicorn' is a spinning dead star that defies physics: 'We have a real mystery on our hands'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Using the world's most advanced radio telescopes, astronomers have discovered a spinning dead star so rare, strange and unique that they have dubbed it a "cosmic unicorn." The unique properties of this object, CHIME J1634+44, challenge our current understanding of spinning dead stars and their environments. CHIME J1634+44, also known as ILT J163430+445010 (J1634+44), is part of a class of objects called Long Period Radio Transients (LPTs). LPTs are a newly found and mysterious type of celestial body that emits bursts of radio waves that repeat on timescales of minutes to hours. That's significantly longer than the emission of standard pulsars, or rapidly spinning neutron star stellar remains that sweep beams of radiation across the cosmos as they spin. But as strange as all LPTs are, CHIME J1634+44 still stands out. Not only is it the brightest LPT ever seen, but it is also the most polarized. Additionally, its pulses of radiation seem highly choreographed. And what really stands out about CHIME J1634+44 is the fact that it is the only LPT astronomers have ever seen whose spin is speeding up. "You could call CHIME J1634+44 a 'unicorn' even among other LPTs. The bursts seem to repeat either every 14 minutes or 841 seconds — but there is a distinct secondary period of 4206 seconds, or 70 minutes, which is exactly five times longer," team leader Fengqiu Adam Dong, a Jansky Fellow at the Green Bank Observatory (GBO), said in a statement. "We think both are real, and this is likely a system with something orbiting a neutron star." The team discovered the unusual traits of CHIME J1634+44 using ground-based instruments including the Green Bank Telescope, the Very Large Array (VLA), the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Fast Radio Burst and Pulsar Project, the NASA-operated space-based observatory, and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (Swift). The object was, in fact, simultaneously discovered by a separate team of astronomers at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, using the LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) radio telescope. While the team led by Dong believes a stellar remnant at the heart of CHIME J1634+44 is a neutron star, the ASTRON team, captained by astronomer Sanne Bloot, refers to it as J1634+44 and think it is a white dwarf. What both teams agree on, though, is just how strange this LPT is. This unicorn is speeding up by feeding on a star Both white dwarfs and neutron stars are dead stars created when stars of differing masses run out of the fuel supplies they need for nuclear fusion at their cores. Once that fuel is over, the stars can no longer support themselves against their own immense gravities. Neutron stars are stellar remnants that form when massive stars, with masses at least eight times that of the sun, reach the end of their lives and collapse. Smaller stars closer in mass to the sun leave behind a slightly less extreme stellar remnant called a "white dwarf." Though most of the mass of these dying massive stars is shed in supernova explosions, the cores of the stars maintain a mass between one and two times that of the sun. This is crushed down to a width of around 12 miles (20 kilometers), creating matter so dense that if a teaspoon of neutron star "stuff" were scooped out and brought to Earth, it would weigh 10 million tons (equal to stacking 85,000 blue whales on a teaspoon). This collapse has another extreme consequence. The dying star maintains its angular momentum, meaning that when its radius is rapidly reduced during collapse, it speeds up greatly. Though the collapse of white dwarfs is less extreme, it also causes an increase in spin speed due to the conservation of angular momentum. An Earth-based example of this is an ice skater pulling in their arms to increase the speed of their spin. What this means is some young neutron stars can spin as fast as 700 times every second. However, as neutron stars and white dwarfs age, they should slow down as they lose energy. That's why no matter what CHIME J1634+44 is, the fact that it is speeding up its spin is very strange. There is a way neutron stars or white dwarfs can increase their spin speed, or "spin up" after their birth. It depends on whether they have a close companion star. As such, the new study's team suspects CHIME J1634+44 may actually be composed of two stellar objects orbiting each other in a tight binary format. The ASTRON team proposes that this companion is either another stellar remnant (like a white dwarf or neutron star) or is a "failed star" brown dwarf — a body that forms like a star but fails to gather enough mass to trigger the nuclear fusion that defines what a star is. As these bodies swirl around each other, they would emit ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves. This carries away angular momentum and causes the two stellar bodies to move closer together. This would cause the period of the binary to appear as if it is shortening. This type of orbital tightening has been witnessed before by astronomers in white dwarf binaries. CHIME J1634+44 gets stranger, however. Its radio bursts are 100% circularly polarized. This means the electromagnetic waves escaping J1634+44 rotate in a circle (like a corkscrew) as they propagate. Thus, the electromagnetic radiation escaping CHIME J1634+44 twists around in a perfect spiral as it moves away from its source. Not only is that extremely rare, but it is something that has never been seen in bursts of radiation from either neutron stars or white dwarfs. That implies the radio wave blasts of CHIME J1634+44 are being generated in a way that is unique for this dead star. Astronomers have a mystery on their hands with this dead star What is also weird about these pulses is the fact that they arrive in pairs, but only when the dead star in the CHIME J1634+44 binary has spun several times without emitting a burst. "The time between pulse pairs seems to follow a choreographed pattern," team member and ASTRON astronomer Harish Vedantham said in a statement. "We think the pattern holds crucial information about how the companion triggers the white dwarf to emit radio waves. "Continued monitoring should help us decode this behavior, but for now, we have a real mystery on our hands." Related Stories: — New kind of pulsar may explain how mysterious 'black widow' systems evolve — Hear 'black widow' pulsar's song as it destroys companion —NASA X-ray spacecraft reveals secrets of a powerful, spinning neutron star The research conducted by these astronomers not only reveals more about neutron stars, the universe's most extreme stellar objects, but also hints at an exciting new phase for radio astronomy. "The discovery of CHIME J1634+44 expands the known population of LPTs and challenges existing models of neutron stars and white dwarfs, suggesting there may be many more such objects awaiting discovery," Dong concluded. Both teams' research was published on Thursday (July 17) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Solve the daily Crossword
USA Today
25-06-2025
- Science
- USA Today
Two Wisconsin researchers part of global team that discovered a new object in space
When students open their science textbooks in the future, there's a chance they'll be reading about a cosmic discovery made by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their discovery "may hold the key to unlocking a new kind of star that we don't yet understand," said UWM physics professor David Kaplan. Kaplan and others, including Akash Anumarlapudi, a recent UWM doctoral graduate, were part of a global team that discovered an unknown object emitting both radio waves and X-rays. This is the first time an object in this class has been detected using X-rays, which may help astronomers find and research more of these objects in the future. What was this cosmic discovery? ASKAP J1832-0911, the unknown space object that the global team of astronomers first spotted in December 2023, is categorized as a long-period transient. LPTs are a new and rare group of cosmic objects discovered in 2022. Ziteng "Andy" Wang, member of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research and associate lecturer at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy in Australia, was another researcher involved in the discovery. After the object was initially spotted in 2023, Kaplan said, Wang spent the next year and a half finding radio telescopes across the world that could point to the area of the sky in which the object was located. Kaplan, who was among nearly 50 researchers directly involved with the project, explained the significance of the discovery. 'It'll still take more study, more observations, more mass to really understand this object and all of its related friends, but it's a lot of fun to think that you are one of the first people to find one of these and to study it and just figure out how weird the universe really is," Kaplan said. What does this have to do with everyday life? Kaplan explained that the techniques used to find LPTs are the same as those used to train advanced computer intelligence models used for security research, TikTok algorithms and more. He said a number of people who are interested in astronomy learn these techniques but go on to make careers in technology at companies like Facebook or Google. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' David Kaplan, physics professor "We're not just looking to inspire the next generation of astronomers,' Kaplan said. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' How was the object discovered? The human eye can see only a tiny fraction of the universe, Kaplan said. Without a carefully designed experiment and special telescopic equipment, light forms like ultraviolet X-rays and gamma rays are difficult to identify. 'When you look up at the sky at night, you can be overwhelmed by the number of stars out there,' Kaplan said. 'But unless you look at them in real detail, you might not notice that some of them are actually changing.' The research project sought to look at the universe through "radio eyes" to find out which cosmic objects were changing, Kaplan explained. Kaplan said 90%-95% of the time researchers were watching for the object, it wasn't actually visible. This is because the object rarely "blinks," only pulsing for two minutes every 44 minutes. A human would never be able to observe this kind of object by looking up into the sky just once, Kaplan said. He compared it to a lighthouse that's lit up for only a few minutes every hour. 'You have to get really lucky in order to see this flashing. And then we had to get even luckier — we accidentally discovered it flashing the X-rays as well as radio,' Kaplan said. 'This whole project is really luck, piled on luck, piled on luck.' What was the discovery process like? The global researchers, along with astronomers from ICRAR, made their discovery using a radio telescope in Australia. The telescope is on a desolate, million-acre farm to avoid man-made noise from cell phones and satellites, Kaplan explained. At first, the team saw nothing when looking at the object through an optical telescope and X-ray telescope. Then, through NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Wang found that a Chinese research group had coincidentally pointed a telescope in the same area of the sky. The group discovered the same information as Kaplan and Wang, and both teams put out papers documenting their findings. Who was involved and what were their roles? Wang served as an author of the team's paper, which was published May 28 in the science journal Nature. Anumarlapudi and Kaplan, from Milwaukee, analyzed radio telescope data, calculated and contributed to the journal publication. Kaplan also helped lead the research team that discovered the object. The nearly 50 global researchers who made up the research team came primarily from the U.S. and Australia, with others from Italy, Spain, China and Israel.
News18
09-06-2025
- Science
- News18
A Strange Signal Is Coming From Space Every 44 Minutes, Scientists Are Baffled
Last Updated: According to Professor Nanda Rea of Spain's Institute of Space Sciences, the discovery hints at the presence of many more such unknown objects hiding across the cosmos A strange celestial object, unlike anything ever observed before, has been discovered by astronomers in Australia. The detection of ASKAP J1832-0911, an object that emits radio and X-ray signals every 44 minutes, is being hailed as a breakthrough that could reshape how scientists understand the universe. The object sends out powerful pulses that last for about two minutes each. These signals were picked up simultaneously by two major observatories: Australia's ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder) radio telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The rare synchronicity of this observation has made the discovery all the more remarkable. Dr Andy Wang from Curtin University, who was part of the research team, described the find as 'like discovering a needle in a haystack". This object doesn't behave like anything we've ever seen before, he added. ASKAP J1832-0911 appears to belong to a relatively new class of celestial phenomena known as Long-Period Transients, or LPTs. These objects were first identified in 2022 and are known for emitting signals over unusually long intervals. However, this is the first time that any LPT has been observed sending out X-rays along with radio waves. What could it be? Scientists are still unsure. One theory suggests that the object could be a magnetar, a remnant core of a collapsed star with an extremely strong magnetic field. Another hypothesis proposes it may be part of a binary star system involving a highly magnetic white dwarf. But even these explanations do not fully account for its unusual behaviour. According to Professor Nanda Rea of Spain's Institute of Space Sciences, the discovery hints at the presence of many more such unknown objects hiding across the cosmos. 'This is just the beginning," she said, adding that the fact that they caught the signal in both radio and X-ray frequencies at the same time shows that they were on the verge of something bigger. The dual-frequency nature of the signals could help astronomers develop new tools and methods for identifying similar phenomena, potentially uncovering more hidden secrets of the universe. For now, ASKAP J1832-0911 remains an enigma, but one that may open new windows into the unknown chapters of space. First Published: June 09, 2025, 17:06 IST
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Something Deep in Our Galaxy Is Pulsing Every 44 Minutes. No One Knows Why.
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: ASKAP J1832-0911 is a long-period radio transient (LPT) object, which emits radio waves in periods of tens of minutes. But it is also the first LPT known to emit X-rays. This mysterious object could take many forms, including a pulsar, a white dwarf star in a binary with a low-mass star, or a magnetar. The object's properties don't exactly fit with any of those proposed options, however. Deep in the galactic plane of the Milky Way, within a region of stars shrouded in gas and dust, one star is behaving like no other that has ever been observed before. Stars can be as mysterious as they are mesmerizing. When scientists at NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory were making observations with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) X-ray imaging instrument, something bizarre appeared—a previously unidentified source of X-rays. Intense X-ray and radio pulses were coming from this source, which is known as ASKAP J1832-0911. This extreme object is a long-period radio transient, or LPT—an astrophysical object whose brightness keeps changing. Few long-period radio transients, whose radio wave emissions vary over tens of minutes, are known. In fact, the first one was only spotted in 2022. The radio wave intensity of ASKAP J1832-0911 cycled every 44 minutes, and was exceptionally bright in radio at the time of observation. Most excitingly for scientists, LPTs had never before been observed emitting both X-rays and radio waves. Astronomer Ziteng Wang from Curtin University in Australia—who led the team of researchers investigating ASKAP J1832-0911—wanted to find out more. The object was observed six months later with ACIS and the Follow-Up Telescope on board ESA's Einstein Probe. By then, its X-ray luminosity had decreased, and so had its radio emissions. But its existence alone is a breakthrough in itself. 'ASKAP J1832–0911 is currently the only LPT detected with (pulsed) X-ray emission — perhaps unsurprisingly, given its extreme radio brightness and the potential correlation between the radio and X-ray luminosities,' Wang and his team said in a study recently published in Nature. This object is thought to be some sort of star, but exactly what kind of star remains debatable. The researchers believe ASKAP J1832–0911 to be compact and to have strong magnetic fields, which would align with the properties of either a magnetic white dwarf (the corpse of a star that has lost its outer layers of gas) or a pulsar (a rotating neutron star that is highly magnetized). But then, there is the issue of its unprecedented pulses. Its X-ray pulses alone are too variable to line up with the steady flash of a pulsar, and X-ray emissions from white dwarves also tend to be fainter and more stable than those produced by ASKAP J1832–0911. So, if it isn't a pulsar or white dwarf, then what is it? Well, it might be a binary white dwarf system—fast-spinning white dwarfs are sometimes found locked in binary systems with other low-mass stars. The radio emissions from these binaries are usually significantly weaker than those from ASKAP J1832–0911, but Wang suggests that the situation remains possible. If not a binary white dwarf system, however, ASKAP J1832–0911 could be a magnetar. These isolated neutron stars have powerful magnetic fields, and the mystery object's properties (including varied pulses and a radio spectrum that is constantly changing)are in line with those of magnetars that emit strong radio waves. Magnetars also throw 'tantrums' with similar X-ray outbursts. But ASKAP J1832–0911 also differs from the typical presentation of magnetars—its quiescent X-ray luminosity (the opposite of its peak luminosity) doesn't line up with expected magnetar behavior, and its especially low luminosity when its rotation slows down doesn't match either. Older magentars are thought to act more like this, but cannot reach such bright radio extremes as ASKAP J1832–0911. 'It could host an unusual core-dominated magnetic field […] requiring a revision to models of magnetic field evolution in neutron stars,' Wang said. 'If ASKAP J1832–0911 is an old magnetar, explaining the radio emission challenges existent models.' Whatever ASKAP J1832–0911 actually is, classifying it will demand consideration of the strength and frequency of both X-ray and radio emissions. For now, it just winks at us. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Indian Express
31-05-2025
- Science
- Indian Express
Scientists baffled by unknown space object that emits X-ray and radio waves every 44 minutes
Scientists have discovered a strange object in space, which they say behaves 'like no other seen before.' Located in the Milky Way, around 15,000 light years away from Earth, the mysterious object ASKAP J1832-0911 is sending pulses of radio waves and X-rays for two minutes straight every 44 minutes. First discovered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, ASKAP J1832-0911 belongs to a class of objects called 'long period radio transients' (also known as LPT), which emit intense radio waves over tens of minutes. NASA says that these waves are thousands of times longer than the length of repeated variations seen in pulsars, which are rapidly spinning neutron stars. According to team leader and Curtin University researcher Zieng (Andy) Wang, 'Discovering that ASKAP J1832-0911 was emitting X-rays felt like finding a needle in a haystack. The ASKAP radio telescope has a wide field view of the night sky, while Chandra observes only a fraction of it. So, it was fortunate that Chandra observed the same area of the night sky at the same time.' Discovered in 2022, LPTs are cosmic bodies that emit radio pulses every few minutes or hours. In the last few years, astronomers have come across 10 LPTs, but say that ASKAP J1832-0911 is unlike any other. Using Chandra, scientists have discovered that ASKAP J1832-0911 also emits 'regularly varying' X-rays every 44 minutes, making it the first long-period radio transient object to do so. As of now, there is no explanation as to how or why LPTs generate these signals and why they 'switch on' and 'switch off' at long, regular and irregular intervals. However, researchers believe that ASKAP J1832-0911 is a dead star, but don't know what type it is. Some say that it could be a magnetar, which is the core of a dead star, while others assume that it could be a pair of stars where one of the two is a highly magnetised dwarf.
