Astronomers spot ‘spooky’ object
in ‘our galactic backyard’
By Edmund DeMarche
Researchers in Australia said
they located a "spooky" item about 4,000 light-years away that
mysteriously becomes one of the brightest objects in the sky for about one
minute every 20 minutes, according to a report.
Natasha Hurley-Walker, an
astrophysicist from Australia’s Curtin University, International Center for
Radio Astronomy Research, said observing its odd bursts of radiation was a bit
spooky because "there’s nothing known in the sky that does that,"
Bloomberg reported.
Phys.org reported that there are
theories about what the object could be. The main theory is that the object is
a neutron star or white dwarf, which the website identified as "collapsed
cores of stars—with an ultra-powerful magnetic field."
Hurley-Walker also pointed out that the object
is 4,000 light-years away, which may sound like a long haul but is seen by
astrophysicists as essentially akin to being in our own "galactic
backyard." There are other known objects that flash in space, but this
frequency has not been seen.
She said there is a theory about
a "slowly spinning neutron star."
"But nobody expected to
directly detect one like this because we didn't expect them to be so bright.
Somehow it's converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively
than anything we've seen before," she said.