(NLDO) - Scientists have just determined the nature of ILTJ1101, a mysterious source that continuously disturbs Earth's observatories with radio pulses.
In a study recently published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy, a team of authors led by Dr. Iris de Ruiter from the University of Sydney (Australia) said they had identified the origin of a strange repeating radio signal.
The story begins in 2015, when Dr. de Ruiter detected a radio pulse stirring LOFAR, a low-frequency array telescope system, consisting of dozens of stations located across Europe.
Upon careful sifting through the data, she discovered six more pulses, all coming from a source called ILTJ1101.
Illustration of how a pair of dead worlds , a white dwarf, dances with a companion red dwarf, sending radio signals to Earth - Photo: SCITECH DAILY
Observations over the next several years, using the 6.5-meter Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas, helped identify the culprit for the radio signal as a pair of stars, one of which was "dead".
More specifically, it is a red dwarf and a white dwarf, orbiting each other every 125 minutes.
Red dwarfs are the smallest and "coolest" type of star in the stellar world, while white dwarfs are the "zombies" of a star that once ran out of energy and collapsed.
However, the "dead world" is very energetic, and its interactions with the red dwarf star - possibly by sucking in material - produce powerful radio pulses.
The pair lies 1,600 light-years away from us, in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major.
Speaking to SciTech Daily, the authors said the discovery proves the existence of a radio source that is completely different from what scientists had previously predicted.
Radio signals, often in the form of radio bursts, are constantly bombarding Earth's observatories from many different directions, causing much debate and skepticism about what is actually emitting them.
The most popular answer is extreme neutron stars or post-neutron collisions. Neutron stars are also “zombies”, but of extremely massive stars.
Additionally, radio bursts can also come from black hole mergers, and some even theorize that they are caused by aliens.
Source: https://nld.com.vn/the-gioi-chet-7-lan-gui-tin-hieu-vo-tuyen-den-trai-dat-196250315074153641.htm
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