The strange object that has been emitting radio signals from space to Earth for 35 years

@ElentirENG ES 10·03·2023 · 22:58 0

Space exploration is a constant source of mysteries, some of which challenge our understanding of physics.

Three possible dark stars have been detected, a celestial body that was only a hypothesis
The Tabby's Star, the enigmatic object that made people dream of an alien megastructure

An example of this is an object called GPM J1839-10. In July this year, a group of scientists from Curtin University published a paper titled "A long-period radio transient active for three decades". The study talks about an object, which they have called GPM J1839-10, which has been emitting radio pulses towards Earth since at least 1988. The study notes that these are "strongly polarized coherent radio pulses appearing on timescales between tens to thousands of seconds."

The group of scientists explains: "In some cases, the radio pulses have been interpreted as coming from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, known as magnetars; the origin of other, occasionally periodic and less-well-sampled radio transients is still debated." Wave emissions are made in 22-minute intervals, with waves lasting up to 5 minutes.

The source of these emissions would be an object located 15,000 light years from Earth, in the Scutum constellation, named Scutum Sobiescii by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in honor of Jan III Sobieski, King of Poland. In that same constellation there is another magnetar, called 1E 1841−045, with a rotation period of 11.8 seconds, an interval that was considered very long until the discovery of GPM J1839-10, whose 22 minutes of rotation beat all known records for this type of star.

A magnetar is a very rare type of neutron star with a very strong magnetic field. Magnetars are classified as pulsars, but they differ from other stars of this type because they emit enormous amounts of X-rays and rays. gamma. These types of objects have been known for only a few years: the first magnetar was identified by the Very Large Telescope observatory in New Mexico in 2008, receiving the designation SWIFT J195509+261406.

Until the discovery of GPM J1839-10 in July, only 24 magnetars and 6 other possible candidates had been discovered. To give us an idea, according to NASA, so far 50 have been discovered possible or confirmed black holes in the Milky Way, although it is believed that there may be up to 100 million in our galaxy alone, so magnetars would be among the strangest and rarest objects in the universe . And within them, and if it is confirmed that it is a star of this type, GPM J1839-10 would be the rarest magnetar found so far, to such an extent that "it is on the limit "the same as any classical theoretical model that predicts the dipolar radio emission of an isolated neutron star," according to the aforementioned group of scientists.