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Over the past decade, scientists have discovered a confusing phenomenon: radio pulses coming from within us Milky Way galaxy It would beats every two hours, such as cosmic heartbeat. Long radio bangs, which lasted between 30 and 90 seconds, appear to come from the direction of the main constellation of Orca, where there is a large dipper.
Now, astronomers have installed the amazing origin of the unusual radio pulses: a dead star, called a white dwarf, and is closely spinning a small and wonderful red dwarf. Red dwarves are the most common type of stars in the universe.
The two stars, collectively known as ILTJ1101, are so closely rotating to each other that their magnetic fields interact, and publish what is known as a long -term transitory, or LPT. Previously, only long radio bursts were tracked to the neutron stars, and the dense residue that was left after the explosion of the huge star.
But the discovery, described in a study published on Wednesday in the magazine Nature astronomyExplain stars movements within the star husband can also create a rare LPTS.
“We have created for the first time the stars that produce radio pulses in a mysterious new category of the long radio crossing,” said Dr. Iris de Reuters, the author of the main study, a post -PhD researcher at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Astronomers say that unprecedented notes of such long shining shirts from the bilateral stars system are just the beginning. This discovery can help scientists better understand the types of stars than producing and sending radio pulses across the universe – in which case, reveal the history and dynamics of two interlocking stars.
Closed
To resolve mystery in the Milky Way, de Ruiter devised a way to determine the radio pulses that last seconds in minutes inside the Low Frequency Telescope, or LOFAR, a network of radio telescopes throughout Europe. It is the largest radio group that works at the lowest discovered frequencies from Earth.
De Reuters, who developed her way while a doctoral student at the University of Amsterdam, revealed one of the observations made in 2015. Then she focused on the same correction from the sky, found six other impulses. Each of them looked from a pale red dwarf star. But De Ruiter did not think that the star would be able to produce radio waves alone. Another thing that must be incited.
The pulses are different from Quick radio burstsWhich are incredibly bright, long flashes of radio waves. De Reuters said that almost all FRBS arises from outside our galaxy, and although some of them are repeated, many of them appear to be events for one time. Fast radio bursts are also much more.
“The radio pulses are very similar to FRBS, but each of them has different lengths,” said Charles Kalpatrick, assistant researcher at the multidisciplinary exploration and research center in the statement.
“The legumes have much lower energies than FRBS and usually last for several seconds, unlike the FRBS that lasts milliliters. There is still a major question about whether there is a continuous series of organisms between long radio and FRBS, or if they are distinct groups.”
De Ruiter and her colleagues made follow-up notes of the Red Dwarf Star using a 21-feelable-length mirror telescope at the MMT Observatory on the Hopkins Mountain in Arizona, as well as the LRS2 tool in the Eberly-located, located at the McDonald Observatory at Davis Mountain in Texas.
Kilpatrick said the observations showed that the red dwarf was moving back and forth quickly, and its movement match with a period of two hours between the radio pulses. The final and back movement was due to the attractiveness of another star on the red dwarf. The researchers were able to measure suggestions and calculate the accompanying star mass, which decided to be a white dwarf.
The team found that the two stars, which is 1600 light -years away from the ground, running together during their administration a common center of gravity, and completing one orbit every 125.5 minutes.
Decode mysterious pulses
The research team believes that there are two possible reasons behind the impulses. Either the white dwarf has a strong magnetic field that routinely releases the impulses, or the magnetic fields of the red dwarf star and white chaos interacting with a rotation.
The team has planned to monitor ILTJ1101 and study any UV light that may emit from the system, which can reveal more on how the two stars interact in the past. De Ruiter also hopes that the team can monitor the system in the light of radio and x -rays during the pulse event, which can shed light on the interaction between the magnetic fields.
“At the moment, the radio pulses have completely disappeared, but this may come back again at a later time,” said Reuters.
The team also combs Lofar data in search of other long pulses.
“We started finding a few of these LPTS in our radio data,” said the co -author of the study, Dr. Kaustubh Rajwade, a radio astronomer in the Department of Physics at Oxford University, in a statement. “Every discovery tells us something new about astronomical things that can create the radio emissions that we see.”
Other research groups It has found 10 long -term emissions systems over the past two years, trying to determine what creates them because the impulses, all of which arise in the Milky Way, “unlike anything we knew before,” said Reute.
Unlike the short shirts produced by the vibrant stars, or the uterus stars that rotate quickly, the LPT can last anywhere in a few seconds to about an hour. Hurley Walker did not participate in the new study.
“When looking back, the transit radio sources motivated some of the most exciting discoveries in astronomical physics: the discovery of the vibrant stars and thus the neutron stars, and the discovery of the FRBS that opened the ability to measure the invisible issue between galaxies, and now the discovery of LPT, where we are only in the advice of the ice through what will tell us,” “What is great for me is that now that we know that these sources exist, We actually find it in decades historical data – they were hiding in sight. “
She said that wiping the sky with strong radio telescopes will only lead to incredible results.
“Most likely it will be a discovery Technosignatures Hurley Walker said about the signals that smart life could create, something that the City Institute has sought for decades.
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