Strange radio waves coming from the heart of the Milky Way baffle scientists

(CNN) – Space experts have detected unusual radio waves coming from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The energy signal is unlike any phenomenon studied before and could suggest a previously unknown stellar object, according to a new study.

The object’s brightness varies dramatically and the signal turns on and off seemingly randomly, said Ziteng Wang, lead author of the new study in The Astrophysical Journal and a doctoral student at the University of Sydney School of Physics.

“The strangest property of this new signal is that it has a very high polarization. This means that its light oscillates in only one direction, but that direction rotates over time,” he said in a press release.

The team initially thought it could be a pulsar, a very dense type of (dead) neutron star that rotates rapidly, or a type of star that emits huge solar flares. However, the signals from this new source of radio waves do not match what astronomers expect from these types of stars.

The fickle object has been named for its coordinates in the night sky: ASKAP J173608,2-321635.

“This object was unique in that it started out invisible, turned bright, faded, and then reappeared. This behavior was extraordinary,” said study co-author Tara Murphy, a professor at the Sydney Institute of Astronomy and the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. Sydney, in the statement.

The object was initially discovered during a survey of the sky using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder radio telescope, known as ASKAP, which has 36 dishes that work together as a single telescope at the Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory in Western Australia. Follow-up observations were made with the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales and the MeerKAT telescope at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory.

However, the Parkes telescope could not detect the source.

“We then tested the more sensitive MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. Because the signal was intermittent, we watched it for 15 minutes every few weeks, hoping to see it again,” Murphy said in the statement.

“Fortunately, the signal came back, but we found that the behavior of the source was dramatically different: the source disappeared in a single day, even though it had lasted for weeks in our previous ASKAP observations.”

Murphy said more powerful telescopes, like the planned Square Kilometer Array, can help solve the mystery. The matrix is ​​an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope that is expected to be completed within the next decade.