Over the past decade, scientists have detected an intriguing phenomenon: radio pulses coming from inside our galaxy, the Milky Way, which pulsed every two hours, such as a cosmic heartbeat. The long radio explosions, which lasted between 30 and 90 seconds, seemed to come from the direction of the Ursa Maior constellation, where the large car is located.
Now astronomers have identified the surprising origin of these unusual radio pulses: a dead star named white dwarf, which is in orbit near a small, cold red dwarf star.
Red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the cosmos. The two stars, known collectively as ILTJ1101, are orbiting each other so close that their magnetic fields interact, emitting what is known as long -term radio transient, or LPT.
Previously, long radio explosions were tracked only to neutron stars, the remnant dense left after a colossal star explosion. But the discovery, described in a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature AstronomyIt shows that the movements of the stars within a star pair can also create rare LPTs.
“We first established which stars produce radio pulses in a new mysterious class of ‘long-term radio transients,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Iris de Ruiter, a postdoctoral researcher at Sydney University, Australia.
The unprecedented observations of such brilliant and long radio explosions of this binary star system are just the beginning, astronomers say. The discovery can help scientists better understand which types of stars are capable of producing and sending radio pulses through the cosmos – and in this case revealing the history and dynamics of two stars intertwined.
Together in a star dance
To resolve this Milky Way mystery, De Ruiter developed a method to identify radio pulses that lasted from seconds to minutes in the Low-Brequency Array Telescope files, or Lofar, a network of radiotelescopes across Europe. It is the largest radio set that operates at the lowest detectable frequencies on Earth.
De Ruiter, who developed his method as a doctoral student at the University of Amsterdam, discovered a single pulse in observations made in 2015. Then, focusing on the same region of the sky, found six more wrists. They all seemed to originate from a fine red dwarf star. But from Ruiter did not think the star would be able to produce radio waves by itself. Something more had to be instigating that.
The pulses differ from rapid radio explosions (FRBs), which are incredibly brilliant flashes of millisecond radio waves. Almost all frbs originate outside our galaxy, and although some of them repeat, many seem to be unique events, Ruiter said. Radio explosions are also much more bright.
“Radio pulses are very similar to FRBs, but each has different lengths,” said study co -author Charles Kilpatrick, research professor at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Astrophysics Research at Northwestern University in a statement. “The wrists have much lower energies than FRBs and usually last several seconds, as opposed to millisecond lasts. There is still a big question about whether there is a continuum of objects between long -term radio transients and FRBs, or if they are distinct populations. ”
De Ruiter and his colleagues made accompanying remarks of the red dwarf star using the 6.5 meter multiple mirrors telescope at MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona, as well as the LRS2 instrument in the Hobby-Eberly telescope, located at the McDonald Observatory on the Davis mountains, Texas. The observations showed that the red dwarf was moving quickly and backwards, and its movement corresponded to the two -hour period between the radio pulses, Kilpatrick said.
The back and forth movement was due to the severity of another star pulling the red dwarf. The researchers were able to measure the movements and calculate the mass of the companion star, which determined to be a white dwarf. The team found that the two stars, located 1,600 light years from Earth, pulsed together while orbiting a common center of gravity, completing an orbit every 125.5 minutes.
Deciphering mysterious wrists
The research team believes there are two possible causes for pulsations. Or the white dwarf has a strong magnetic field that regularly releases the pulsations, or the magnetic fields of the red dwarf and white dwarf interact during their orbits.
The team plans to observe ILTJ1101 and study any ultraviolet light that can emanate from the system, which could reveal more about how the two stars interacted in the past. De Ruiter also expects the team to observe the system in radio light and x-rays during a pulse event, which could clarify the interaction between the magnetic fields.
“At the moment, the radio wrists disappeared completely, but they can come back again later,” Ruiter said.
“We are starting to find some of these LPTs in our radio data,” said study co -author Dr. Kaustubh Rajwade, radio astronomer at the University of Oxford Department of Physics in a statement. “Each discovery reveals something new to the extreme astrophysical objects that can create the radio emission we see.”
Other research groups have found 10 long radio pulses emitting systems in recent years, and are trying to determine what creates them, because the wrists, all originated on the Milky Way, “are different from anything we knew before,” Ruiter said.
Unlike the short explosions produced by pulsars, or rapidly spinning neutron stars, LPTs can last from almost an hour, Natasha Hurley-Walker, radio astronomer and associated professor at the Curtin University of the International Radioastronomy Research Center in Australia. Hurley-Walker did not participate in the new study.
“Looking back, transient radio sources stimulated some of the most exciting discoveries in astrophysics: the discovery of pulsars and, therefore, neutron stars, the discovery of FRBs that have unlocked the ability to measure the invisible matter between Galaxies, and now the discovery of LPTs, where we are only on the tip of the iceberg in terms of what they will say,” he said, “he said,” Hurley-Walker by email. “What is fascinating to me is that now that we know that these sources exist, we are really finding it in historical data that dates back to decades – they were hidden in the sight of all.”
Sewing the sky with powerful radiotelescopes will only lead to more amazing discoveries, she said. “The largest would probably be the discovery of Seti technostatures,” Hurley-Walker said about signs that could be created for intelligent life, something the Seti Institute has been looking for for decades.
Webb observes chaos around the central black hole of the Milky Way
This content was originally published in scientists discover the origin of mysterious radio pulses on the Milky Way on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil

Charles Grill is a tech-savvy writer with over 3 years of experience in the field. He writes on a variety of technology-related topics and has a strong focus on the latest advancements in the industry. He is connected with several online news websites and is currently contributing to a technology-focused platform.