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Time of India
01-06-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Mysterious space object sends signals to Earth every 44 minutes, scientists baffled
Astronomers in Australia have detected a mysterious cosmic object , named ASKAP J1832-0911 , that sends out bursts of radio and X-ray signals every 44 minutes, an occurrence unlike anything previously observed. The discovery was made using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and NASA's powerful Chandra X-ray Observatory. The signals last for about two minutes and reappear at consistent intervals, leaving scientists puzzled. This rare behaviour classifies the object as a long-period transient (LPT), a phenomenon not well understood. The discovery raises new questions about the evolution of dead stars and the possibilities of unknown space physics. How does the mysterious object ASKAP behave ASKAP J1832-0911 doesn't behave like any known star or pulsar. While typical pulsars emit rapid pulses lasting milliseconds or seconds, this object produces signals at much longer and consistent intervals. It 'switches on' and 'switches off' every 44 minutes, a rhythmic pattern that puzzles scientists. This behaviour defies existing theories of stellar remnants, which generally operate on much shorter timescales. The precise timing and strength of these signals suggest a mechanism we have yet to fully understand. With no known counterparts in current astrophysical databases, this object may represent a new class of transient phenomena in deep space. Possible explanations of sending signals every 44 minutes Scientists suggest that ASKAP J1832-0911 could be a type of magnetar, a highly magnetic remnant of a dead star, or a binary system involving a white dwarf. However, none of these theories fully explain the signal pattern. The regularity and intensity of the pulses point toward unknown or poorly understood physics, sparking interest in developing new models. The role of cutting-edge observatories The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory played a key role in this discovery. ASKAP detected the radio pulses, while Chandra confirmed X-ray emissions from the same source. This multi-wavelength approach provided the necessary evidence to classify the object and rule out common causes like interference or background noise. What makes this discovery important This may be the first indication of a new class of celestial bodies. Long-period transients are extremely rare, and this one could reshape how we understand stellar remnants and high-energy cosmic events. It also highlights the importance of continuous sky monitoring to catch such unusual phenomena in action. Next steps in the investigation Astronomers plan to search for similar signals across the sky using the same observatories. Identifying more objects like ASKAP J1832-0911 could confirm whether it is truly unique or part of a hidden population. Future observations may also uncover details about its origin, energy source, and possible implications for space science.
Time of India
30-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Rare space object blasts X-rays and radio waves every 44 minutes
Astronomers have detected a rare space object that emits powerful bursts of energy in both radio and X-ray wavelengths every 44 minutes. The object, known as ASKAP J1832-0911 , lies around 15,000 light-years away in the Milky Way and is the first of its kind to show such behaviour across both ends of the electromagnetic spectrum. Long-period transients (LPTs) a recently identified class of cosmic bodies typically emit brief pulses of radio waves separated by hours or minutes. But until now, none had been observed producing X-ray emissions . ASKAP J1832-0911 has changed that, emitting energy levels far beyond anything previously recorded in this category. 'This object is unlike anything we have seen before,' said Dr Ziteng (Andy) Wang, lead author of the study and a researcher at Curtin University, part of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). The findings were published this week in *Nature*. A lucky observation by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch CFD với công nghệ và tốc độ tốt hơn IC Markets Đăng ký Undo ASKAP J1832-0911 was initially detected via radio signals by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), operated by CSIRO on Wajarri Yamaji Country. By sheer coincidence, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory happened to be surveying the same region of sky at the same time, enabling astronomers to match the radio pulses with bursts of X-ray radiation. 'Discovering that ASKAP J1832-0911 was emitting X-rays felt like finding a needle in a haystack,' said Dr Wang. 'The ASKAP telescope has a broad view of the sky, but Chandra focuses on a much smaller region, so the overlap was a matter of great fortune.' Since the first LPT was discovered in 2022, around ten more have been identified. But none has demonstrated behaviour as intense and regular as ASKAP J1832-0911. New Physics on the horizon? Astronomers suspect ASKAP J1832-0911 could be either an ageing magnetar a type of dead star with extremely strong magnetic fields or a binary system containing a magnetised white dwarf, the remnant of a low-mass star. 'ASKAP J1831-0911 could be a magnetar, or it could be a pair of stars in a binary system where one is a highly magnetised white dwarf,' Wang explained. 'However, even those theories do not fully explain what we are observing. This discovery could indicate a new type of physics or new models of stellar evolution.' A doorway to more discoveries According to Professor Nanda Rea from the Institute of Space Science (ICE-CSIC) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), the discovery suggests ASKAP J1832-0911 may be the first of many similar objects. 'Finding one such object hints at the existence of many more,' Rea said. 'The discovery of its transient X-ray emission opens fresh insights into their mysterious nature.'
New York Times
12-04-2025
- Science
- New York Times
A Self-Made Space Historian Is Stepping Into the Role Full Time
Jonathan McDowell is a go-to expert for all things spaceflight. Thousands of subscribers read his monthly Space Report, and far more people have seen him on cable news and other media platforms explaining unexpected events in orbit. But that has always been his side gig: For 37 years, Dr. McDowell has been a specialist in X-ray astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Earlier this year he announced he was retiring from the role, and also leaving the United States for Britain. The decision was prompted in part, he said, by ongoing pressures on the federal science budget, made more complicated by policy changes since President Trump's inauguration. 'It just doesn't seem like the opportunities are going to be there to be an effective scientist, and an effective person building the science community, in the U.S. anymore,' Dr. McDowell said. 'I just don't feel as proud to be an American as I used to be.' Born with dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, Dr. McDowell joined the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in 1988 and leads the science data systems group there for NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, a space telescope in its 26th year. In the next phase of his career, Dr. McDowell said, he wants to devote more time to documenting what's happening in space. With an accent that he joked is becoming decidedly more British as he prepares to move abroad, Dr. McDowell spoke with The New York Times about what drives his passion for space. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity. What sparked your interest in space? There were really two routes. The satellites and space side really came about from the Apollo program. I remember walking home from school in northern England. I saw the moon in the sky and thought: 'Next week, for the first time, human beings are going to be up there. They're going to be on another world.' That blew my mind as a 9-year-old. The astronomy side came from wondering where we came from, what the real story was about how the universe came to be. That pushed me toward an interest in cosmology at a pretty early age. My father was a physicist, and all of my babysitters were, too. I kind of didn't realize there was any other option. Another big influence was 'Doctor Who,' which I started watching at age 3. That imbued me with a sense of wonder about the universe and the idea that one crazy person can help how humanity interacts with it. All of those things came together to make me just fascinated by what's out there. In the British school system, we specialize early. I was doing orbital calculations from age 14, and I learned Russian so I could read what the Soyuz astronauts were doing. I went on to do a Ph.D. at Cambridge University, so I got to hang out with people like Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees, the current Astronomer Royal. It couldn't have been a better training. On the side, I was leveraging my technical skills to go deeper into spaceflight. At the time, the media was not really covering space, so that forced me to do my own research. Is that what led to the creation of Jonathan's Space Report in 1989? I had just moved to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which was once a center for space information for the public in the 1950s. Public affairs started bombarding me with questions they were still getting from the public, so in self-defense, I started preparing a briefing for them on what was happening in space each week. Someone recommended that I should put the briefing on Usenet, a sort of precursor to the Web, which didn't exist yet. To my surprise, it was popular. And I never looked back. I took a more international view than most news sources, particularly in the United States. I gave equal weight to what the Russians, the Chinese and the Europeans were doing. That helped me gain a reputation, and people in the space industry started sending me tidbits of information. Why have you kept the space report free? Honestly, most of the work I'm doing for myself anyway. I am the No. 1 reader. But I also have this role now of being someone people trust to say what's really going on. I can only keep that reputation for independence and objectivity if I don't take direct money for it. How has spaceflight and space exploration changed over your life? I grew up in the 1960s during the superpower era. It was the U.S., the Soviet Union and the Cold War. In the 1970s, space became more international. China, Japan, France and others started launching their own rockets and satellites. Then in the 1990s, we saw a turn to commercialization, in both communications and imaging. And then in the 2000s and 2010s, there was another shift that I call democratization, where cheap satellites made space within the budget of a university department, a developing country or a start-up. The most important thing about space in 2025 is not that there are more satellites, but that there are many more players. This has implications for governance and regulation. Another way of thinking about how things have changed is where the frontier is. When I was a kid, it was low-Earth orbit. Now, the frontier is out near the asteroid belt, and the moon and Mars are becoming part of where humanity just hangs out, maybe not yet as people, but with robots. Meanwhile, low-Earth orbit is so normalized that it doesn't take a space agency to deal with it. You just call SpaceX. How are you planning to spend retirement? The United Kingdom has been active recently in pushing for what we call space sustainability. They're committed to using space, but responsibly. I'm hoping I can get involved in those efforts. I compile a big catalog of space junk around the sun that the U.S. Space Force doesn't keep track of. It's no one's job right now to keep track of that. We really need to get our act together for the more distant stuff, what we're sending out in between the planets, because it comes back years later. We think it's an asteroid that's going to hit Earth, when it's really just a rocket stage. Most space historians focus on the people, not the hardware, so another aspect of my whole shtick is documenting what space projects actually did. I've been dumpster diving in space agency libraries for 50 years. I have about 200 bookcases' worth of a library that is currently in 1,142 boxes. Half of the stuff is probably scattered on the internet. But a significant subset of it is fairly rare. Obviously it all needs to be scanned, and it's going to take me years. I need to find a new home for the library, somewhere that is a reasonable commute from London. My plan is that when it's unpacked, I'll make it available by appointment to anyone who wants to come do research in it. What motivates you to record human activity in space so meticulously? As an astronomer, I think in long time scales. I imagine people a thousand years from now, perhaps at a time when more people live off Earth than on it, who want to know about this critical moment in history when, for the first time, we were stepping into space. I want to preserve this information so they can reconstruct what we did. That's who I'm writing for. Not today's audience, but the audience a thousand years from now.
The Independent
17-02-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Scientists see powerful explosion from mysterious, unknown object in space
Scientists have seen a powerful explosion from a mysterious, unknown object in space. Researchers do not know where the bright flash came from. But they believe that it may be something entirely unknown or never seen before. In May 2020, a Nasa space telescope was observing the leftovers of an exploded star in a nearby galaxy. As it did, it captured a bright and extremely fast X-ray flash. Researchers do not know where it came from, or what object might have caused such a dramatic flash. It could be the first X-ray burster found in that Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, a flare coming out of a mysterious magnetar – or something else entirely, researchers said. The flash had disappeared within a few seconds and actually went unnoticed for years, according to the researchers who found it. It was detected within more than 20 years of archive data collected by Nasa's Chandra X-Ray Observatory. "Have you ever flipped through old photo albums and suddenly found something fascinating hidden in the background of a picture, no one had ever noticed before? Now imagine doing that on a cosmic scale," said lead researcher Steven Dillmann, a PhD student at Stanford University. "Using a novel machine learning approach, we looked back through over 20 years of archived observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and discovered a remarkable, powerful X-ray flash from an unknown object outside our own galaxy that had gone unnoticed for years within the vast Chandra archive – a true needle in the haystack event." The finding is reported in a new paper, 'Representation learning for time-domain high-energy astrophysics: Discovery of extragalactic fast X-ray transient XRT 200515', published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
