Scientists have been baffled by a mysterious signal received from deep space that is repeating itself every hour.
According to the discovery team, it “isn’t like anything astronomers have seen before. We can’t quite explain what’s going on here”.
The total time of the signal is recorded at 53.8 minutes, the longest ever, reported the New York Post.
The signal is reportedly coming from around 4.85 kiloparsecs away. A regular parsec is equal to 191,73,501,441,011 miles, meaning that the source is far away from our planet Earth.
The team was quoted as saying: “It’s most likely a very unusual neutron star and the other possibilities cannot be ruled out.”
“Similar patterns have been seen in neutron stars, but our current understanding of neutron stars suggests they should not be able to have such a long period.”
The transmission was first recorded by the telescope ASKAP J1935+2148 while searching for gamma rays.
“We don’t know how long ASKAP J1935+2148 has been emitting radio signals, as radio astronomy surveys don’t usually search for objects with periods this long,” the team said.
As the tea said it is not a neutron star, it could be a white dwarf — the object that has burned out all of its fuel. It is being considered as the likely source.
“This object might prompt us to reconsider our decades-old understanding of neutron stars or white dwarfs, particularly in how they emit radio waves and what their populations are like within our galaxy.”
