Where do these strange space signals come from? Details below.
Planet Earth is receiving a strange signal from across the galaxy and astronomers are struggling to understand what it means. At the moment they know what is emitting the signals and that it is a neutron star called ASKAP J1935+2148, located in the plane of the Milky Way, about 15,820 light years from Earth.
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But the signs themselves are unlike any they’ve seen before. The star goes through periods of strong pulses, periods of weak pulses, and periods of no pulse at all. According to a team led by astrophysicist Manisha Caleb of the University of Sydney in Australia, it remains to find out the reason why it sends the probes. The strange object poses a fascinating challenge to our models of neutron star evolution.
Astronaut in space
Pixabay
The strange signal that comes from space
ASKAP J1935+2148 does not behave normally for a neutron star. It was first identified during observations of a different target, the scientists explained, and follow-up observations were made using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.
Thus they discovered that the ASKAP star has a regular heartbeat period of 53.8 minutes. But they soon discovered that one pulsation mode was extremely bright, with a very linear polarization. But then it would disappear completely.
