A research group in Australia has made an intriguing discovery about a celestial body known as GPM J1839−10. Located 15,000 light-years from Earth, this object emits a signal that lasts up to five minutes every 22 minutes. The team, led by Natasha Hurley-Walker, was able to confirm this phenomenon by analyzing archive recordings dating back to 1988.
Interestingly, this is not the first mysterious object that Hurley-Walker’s team has come across. About a year and a half ago, they stumbled upon an object that became one of the brightest radio sources in the sky for approximately one minute every 18 minutes. Unable to explain its origin, they began searching for similar radio sources and found one that flashed every 22 minutes and lasted five times longer than the first object.
Typically, periodically recurring signals from celestial bodies such as neutron stars or magnetars are the result of their rotation and the intense magnetic fields they possess. However, the slow rotation of the object found by Hurley-Walker’s team challenges this explanation. If it is a magnetar, it should not be able to generate such signals. Furthermore, magnetars are usually active for only a few months or years, whereas this object has been emitting signals for 30 years.
The team is intrigued by this discovery and hopes to gain fundamental insights into the nature of neutron stars. They speculate that the object could be an “ultra-long-period magnetar,” a theoretical concept, or something even more extraordinary. The findings have been published in the scientific journal Nature.
Overall, this discovery raises more questions than answers and highlights the remarkable mysteries that still exist in the universe. The team’s ongoing research into this celestial body could provide breakthroughs in our understanding of neutron stars and the mechanisms that generate these signals.
