Most scientists and even ordinary people agree that the Universe is far too big to have been created only for us humans. Extraterrestrial life must be there somewhere, but what if it’s “waving” at us in a way we don’t know how to decipher?
The Curtin University Honours student Tyrone O’Doherty is the lucky scientist who discovered an unusual and spinning object in our galaxy, 4,000 light-years away from Earth, that sends huge amounts of radio signals towards our planet once every 18 minutes and for a full minute, according to the BBC. The object also possesses an extremely strong magnetic field.
No astronomers had seen something similar in space
If you’re at least a bit interested in astronomy, surely you’ve heard already about space objects that shoot energy into space. But the newfound object is peculiar due to the fact that it does it by its unusual pattern: activating for a minute and then shutting down. However, astronomers recognized the existence of transients for quite a while, meaning objects that turn on and off. But the fact that the newfound object turns on for a full minute is what makes it so intriguing.
Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astrophysicist from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), who led the team where O’Dohery was also a member, explained as the BBC quotes:
[It] 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.
At this point, astronomers suspect that they’re dealing with a white dwarf or a neutron star.
The team of scientists is aiming to find out more about the mysterious space object, and hopefully, it will bring new information soon enough. There’s no guarantee that any kind of extraterrestrial life is to blame for the phenomenon.
