Later in the hour, we’ll be talking about the government shutdown and its effects on the scientific community. Why is California’s monarch butterfly population disappearing? Read more about the mysterious cosmic radio burst. Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer at Gizmodo, joins Ira to talk about the fast radio burst research and other selected short subjects in science, including the plight of the monarch butterfly, the tale of an ancient woman with a bit of blue pigment in her teeth, and more. Scientists reported spotting 13 new FRBs, including the second repeating source ever identified. Among the topics of discussion was a new set of new observations of fast radio bursts (FRBs), strange millisecond-long, high-energy blips of radio energy from billions of light years away. This week, hundreds of astronomers met at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/S. The team of scientists believe it could be a type of dead star.A rupture in the crust of a highly magnetized neutron star, shown here in an artist’s rendering, can trigger high-energy eruptions. Do unexplained or unusual signals from space make you wonder if we’re alone, if we should finally be getting ready for close encounters with extraterrestrial intelligence? “It’s definitely not aliens,” she stated in ‘The Guardian’. More research is needed to figure out what the object is and what is causing the bursts of energy. “More detections will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we’d never noticed before,” commented Dr Hurley-Walker. Team members continue to search for evidence of other similar objects. The team will continue to monitor the object to see whether it turns back on. And it’s really quite close to us-about 4000 lightyears away. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that. “This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations,” explained Dr Hurley-Walker in the press release. They have been seen before by astronomers emitting bursts of radio signs, but usually for seconds or milliseconds, not longer. Objects that turn on and off are common events in the universe. “The MWA’s wide field of view and extreme sensitivity are perfect for surveying the entire sky and detecting the unexpected.” “Spooky” space object “It’s exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object,” said O’Doherty in an ICRAR press release. The object was found by Curtin University honours and PhD student Tyrone O’Doherty with a telescope called Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and a new method he developed. Even though this mysterious celestial object is one of the brightest points in the sky, it’s invisible to the naked eye. “It’s mind-bogglingly wonderful that the universe is still full of surprises,” lead author and astrophysicist Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia told ‘Euronews’. Their findings were published in the journal ‘Nature’. Over a 24-hour period, they observed the object giving off bursts of radio energy about every 18 minutes over several hours before disappearing. It released periodic bursts of radio energy out in the western Australia outback. © International Centre for Radio Astronomy Researchĭo you ever find yourself captivated by all things bright and beautiful when you look up at the cosmos? There’s a new twist to this age-old fascination.Īustralian scientists discovered an unknown spinning object in the Milky Way galaxy.
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