This is generally how the alien movies start, and unfortunately I think we know how they usually end:
Here's the scoop:
Astronomers have discovered a mysterious object flashing strange signals from deep space, and they have no idea what it is.
The object, named ASKAP J1832-0911, spits out pulses of radio waves and X-rays for two minutes straight, once every 44 minutes.
Detected by Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, the strange repeating signals are currently unexplained — and unravelling this cosmic mystery could reveal new physics, according to the researchers who discovered it.
The object is apparently located about 15,000 light-years from Earth, which, converted to something the average human might sort of understand, is 88,179,380,597,746,510 miles.
The object is reportedly "unlike anything we have seen before," one of the lead researchers said. Some ideas include a magnetar (an extremely powerful neutron star) or a pair of binary stars.
But "even those theories do not fully explain what we are observing ... This discovery could indicate a new type of physics or new models of stellar evolution."
The object is considered a "long-period transient (LPT), a class of rare and extreme astrophysical events that sweep out beams of radio waves like cosmic lighthouses:"
Unlike traditional pulsars, which are produced by neutron stars and spit out radio signals every few seconds or milliseconds, LPTs emit pulses at intervals of minutes or hours apart — a period previously thought to be impossible. This has made the cause of the signals, and how they are able to switch on and off at long and regular intervals, a mystery among astronomers.
It was remarkable enough that it was observed in the first place: The ASKAP radio telescope "has a wide field view of the night sky, while Chandra observes only a fraction of it. ... It was fortunate that Chandra observed the same area of the night sky at the same time."
I myself would love to know just what the heck that thing is!
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