Mysterious object 4,000 light years away unlike anything seen before

A mysterious object that is just 4,000 light years away from Earth is unlike anything ever seen before in space, astronomers have said.

They think it could be a neutron star or a white dwarf – collapsed cores of stars – with an ultra-powerful magnetic field, also known as a magnetar. 

As it spins through the cosmos, the 'spooky' object sends out a beam of radiation, and for one minute in every 20 it is one of the brightest objects in the night sky.

Observations show it releasing a giant burst of energy three times an hour.  

© Provided by Daily Mail 'Spooky': A mysterious object that is just 4,000 light years away from Earth is unlike anything ever seen before in space, astronomers have said. Pictured is an artist's impression of what the object might look like if it's a magnetar, which is an incredibly magnetic neutron star

Astrophysicist Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker, from the Curtin University, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia, led the team that made the discovery.

Her team was mapping radio waves in the universe when they came across the potential 'magnetar'.

She said: 'This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations.

'That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there's nothing known in the sky that does that.

'And it's really quite close to us — about 4,000 light years away. It's in our galactic backyard.'

Dr Hurley-Walker added that the observations match a predicted astrophysical object called an 'ultra-long period magnetar'.

'It's a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically,' she said.

Video: Scientists find ‘strange metal’ that behaves in mysterious ways.mp4 (The Independent)

Scientists find ‘strange metal’ that behaves in mysterious ways.mp4

The Independent See more videos

SHARE

SHARE

TWEET

SHARE

EMAIL

What to watch next

• 

  Magic mushrooms could replace antidepressants within five years, says new psychedelic research centre

  
  The Independent
• 

  Naps connected to dementia?

  
  The Independent
• 

  COVID Vaccines Saved 20M Lives In 1st Year, Scientists Say

  
  The Independent
• 

  Scientific study claims heart attacks could be predicted in advance with eye test

  
  The Independent
• 

  American Humane offers safety tips for dogs in hot weather

  
  The Independent
• 

  CERN's Latest LHC Experiment Aimed at Explaining the Mystery of Dark Matter

  
  The Independent
• 

  Scientists Look to Uncover the Last Dinosaurs to Roam the Earth Before Asteroid Hit

  
  The Independent
• 

  Panda Celebrates His Birthday In Nanning, Guangxi, China

  
  The Independent
• 

  Mount Everest Base Camp To Be Moved From Melting Glacier

  
  The Independent
• 

  Humpback whale surfaces near boats off Mexico

  
  The Independent
• 

  The Importance of HIV Testing

  
  The Independent
• 

  Preventing and treating mosquito bites

  
  The Independent
• 

  Listening to 'groovy' music from artists such as ABBA and the Bee Gees can boost brain performance

  
  The Independent
• 

  Kangaroos Communicate With Humans In The Same Way As Dogs

  
  The Independent
• 

  Major step towards 'artificial photosynthesis' as device produces clean energy like plants.mp4

  
  The Independent
• 

  Scientists Find First Evidence of Dinosaur ‘Belly Button’

  
  The Independent

Click to expand

Replay Video

• Magic mushrooms could replace antidepressants within five years, says new psychedelic research centre The Independent
• Naps connected to dementia? Frequent naps in older adults could be a sign of dementia. Dr. Desiree Thomas with Kelsey-Seybold Clinic explains. The Independent
• COVID Vaccines Saved 20M Lives In 1st Year, Scientists Say Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday.On Dec. 8, 2020, a retired shop clerk in England received the first shot in what would become a global vaccination campaign. Over the next 12 months, more than 4.3 billion people around the world lined up for the vaccines.The effort, though marred by persisting inequities, prevented deaths on an unimaginable scale, said Oliver Watson of Imperial College London, who led the new modeling study."Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind," Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn't been available to fight the coronavirus. The findings "quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines."The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom.An additional 600,000 deaths would have been prevented if the World Health Organization target of 40% vaccination coverage by the end of 2021 had been met, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.The main finding 19.8 million COVID-19 deaths were prevented is based on estimates of how many more deaths than usual occurred during the time period. Using only reported COVID-19 deaths, the same model yielded 14.4 million deaths averted by vaccines.The London scientists excluded China because of uncertainty around the pandemic's effect on deaths there and its huge population.The study has other limitations. The researchers did not include how the virus might have mutated differently in the absence of vaccines. And they did not factor in how lockdowns or mask wearing might have changed if vaccines weren't available.Another modeling group used a different approach to estimate that 16.3 million COVID-19 deaths were averted by vaccines. That work, by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, has not been published.In the real world, people wear masks more often when cases are surging, said the institute's Ali Mokdad, and 2021's delta wave without vaccines would have prompted a major policy response."We may disagree on the number as scientists, but we all agree that COVID vaccines saved lots of lives," Mokdad said.The findings underscore both the achievements and the shortcomings of the vaccination campaign, said Adam Finn of Bristol Medical School in England, who like Mokdad was not involved in the study."Although we did pretty well this time we saved millions and millions of lives we could have done better and we should do better in the future," Finn said.Funding came from several groups including the WHO; the UK Medical Research Council; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.Additional reporting by The Associated Press. The Independent

UP NEXT

'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.'

Curtin University Honours student Tyrone O'Doherty discovered the object using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in outback Western Australia.

He said: 'It's exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object.

'The MWA's wide field of view and extreme sensitivity are perfect for surveying the entire sky and detecting the unexpected.'

Objects that turn on and off in the universe are not new, and astronomers call them transients, with some appearing over the course of a few days and disappearing after a few months, and others flashing on and off within milliseconds or seconds.

However, ICRAR-Curtin astrophysicist and co-author Dr Gemma Anderson said finding something that turned on for just a minute made the new discovery unusual.

© Provided by Daily Mail This image shows the Milky Way as viewed from Earth. The star icon shows the position of the mysterious object astronomers have discovered

© Provided by Daily Mail Curtin University Honours student Tyrone O'Doherty discovered the object using the Murchison Widefield Array telescope (pictured) in outback Western Australia

She explained that the mysterious object was incredibly bright and smaller than the sun, emitting the kind of radio waves that suggested it had an extremely strong magnetic field.

Dr Anderson added that 'when studying transients, you're watching the death of a massive star or the activity of the remnants it leaves behind.'

The researchers are now monitoring the object to see if it switches back on, and plan to search for ore of these unusual objects in the vast archives of the MWA.

'If it does, there are telescopes across the Southern Hemisphere and even in orbit that can point straight to it,' Dr Hurley-Walker said. 

'More detections will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we'd never noticed before.'

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

SKA WILL BE THE WORLD'S LARGEST RADIO TELESCOPE 

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a joint project between Australia and South Africa, will be the world’s largest radio telescope. 

More sensitive than any current radio telescope, it will enable scientists to study the universe in more detail than ever before. 

The telescope will be located in South Africa and Australia, with the international headquarters located at Jodrell Bank, in the UK. 

Nearly 200 mid-frequency dishes (including the existing MeerKAT facility which was officially launched in July 2018) will be located in the Karoo region of South Africa. 

© Provided by Daily Mail Artist's impression of the 3-mile (5km) diameter central core of Square Kilometre Array (SKA) antennas

Around 130,000 low-frequency antennas will be located in Western Australia.

Both sites are far from sources of radio frequency interference which will allow for very sensitive measurements to be undertaken. 

The SKA will be made up of 2 instruments, SKA-mid (the dishes) and SKA-low (the antennas). 

The signals from the dishes will be transported via optical fibre to a central computer where they will be combined using a technique called interferometry. 

Similarly the signal from all of the antennas will also be combined and converted to scientific data that astronomers will use to study the universe. 

Source: UKRI