Mystery Object – It Puzzled Scientists By Disappearing A Giant Star
The disappearance of a distant, big star for almost 200 days caught scientists puzzled, as they had not seen such disappearances before, according to National Geographic. After about a decade of investigating various causes, scientists still don't know what's the mystery object that is blocking off almost all of the star's light.
The disappearance of a distant, big star for almost 200 days caught scientists puzzled, as they had not seen such disappearances before, according to National Geographic.
After about a decade of investigating various causes, scientists still don't know what's the mystery objectthat is blocking off almost all of the star's light.
Some of the remaining hypotheses, detailed in recent research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, depend on as-yet-unobserved events such as a dark disk of material circling a nearby black hole or unknown, dust-enshrouded partner stars.
A team's task was made more complicated because, in 17 years of monitoring, the star only went dark once, in 2012.
The Milky Way galaxy, which contains our solar system, is filled with strange and fascinating phenomena.
Take the almost one thousand mysterious filaments or threads in the Milky Way's core, which were discovered last week.
Many of them stretch for more than 150 meters.
In late January of 2022, scientists discovered yet another unidentified celestial body; this one was described as more starlike than previous ones but still wholly unprecedented.
The light on this one goes out for almost 18 minutes before returning for another minute.
This kind of object is known as a transient in the astronomical community.
This one points toward Norma, a constellation visible in the southern hemisphere.
It's unclear what it is, but roughly three times an hour, it becomes one of the brightest radio emitters in our sky by sending out a beam of radio wavesthat spans Earth.
Astronomers see slow transients, which are sometimes produced when stars die.
They shine brightly for a few days but then fade away.
For instance, a supernova is a slow transient.
Similarly, rapid transients may result from the destruction of other stars.
It's possible to see pulsars, a kind of neutron star, blink on and off because they emit a beam.
However, a pulsar's flash lasts only a few milliseconds or seconds.
This new object's brightness cycle may thus seem to be anywhere in the middle, between sluggish and quick.
The new object's blink rate is not measured in days or seconds but minutes.
And this is something novel.
Researchers from the International Center for Radio Astronomyanalyzed it.
On January 26th, their findings were published in the prestigious magazine Nature.
This new object must be rotating in space, as we detect a beam of some radio waves as it moves over the face of the Earth.
Scientists think that this object rotates in minutes. If so, why?
The scientific crew has some ideas on what the mystery object may be.
They think it's like a star's core that's been crushed to the ground.
Neutron stars and white dwarfs are two of the many possible fates for stellar remnants.
The strange new object seems to have a very powerful magnetic field, which might be a clue.
This very luminous object is far less massive than our sun, and its radio waves are strongly polarized.
The polarization of radio waves provides evidence for a powerful magnetic field.
This hypothetical neutron star spins very slowly and was expected to exist.
But no one anticipated seeing one like this with the naked eye since we didn't think they'd be quite that luminous.
Magnetic energy is being converted into radio waves at an unprecedented rate.
Astronomers have anticipated a strange object like this.
An very long-period magnetar was the official label.
After appearing in the astronomer's data for a brief three months, the mysterious object suddenly vanished.
The astronomers are waiting for it to resurface and looking for similar objects in the meantime.
If astronomers make further discoveries, they will learn if this was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence or the beginning of the discovery of a massive new population.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope is anticipated to begin operations within the next decade, much to astronomers' excitement.
As the biggest radio telescope ever built, it will help astronomers better understand some of the universe's most baffling mysteries.
Visual illustration of planets in outer space with satellites and meteors
Smith and his coworkers were stumped by the star's peculiar behavior and set out to find an explanation.
Variations in luminosity caused by pulsations or spasms inside the star were studied, and this kind of activity is typical, but not seen to any great extent in stars like VVV-WIT-08.
The scientists also discounted the possibility that the eclipse was caused by coincidence with a nearby, dark, foreground object like a dusty, faint star.
According to Smith:
“„
we'd need a massive number of these black floating things. The possibility of it happening is low, since we should have seen many more instances like that in the area.
Whatever obscured VVV-WIT-08 is probably gravitationally connected to the star, an idea supported by Wright and others.
And if that is the case, the scientists argue that a vast ring of dusty debris around a companion star in orbit would be the best explanation.
These kinds of systems actually occur, with the most famous example being Epsilon Aurigae, where every 27 years a supergiant star gets overshadowed in part by a giant, dust-enshrouded partner.
However, dust acts as a filter for light, enabling longer, redder wavelengths to get through, which is not what we see in our measurements.
And debris disks often tail out gradually rather than ending abruptly, but Wright notes that Saturn's tiny moonlets shave clean holes into the rings.
What type of companion object VV-WIT-08 could have in orbit is similarly unclear.
Disks that generally develop around main sequence stars and massive stellar corpses like white dwarfs were explored, but they could not provide a sufficient explanation for the data.
Astronomers believe should exist but have never witnessed, an orbiting black hole encircled by a dark, dense debris ring is another possible explanation.
One other possibility is that an orbiting companion is clearing the star's path of dust, but this wouldn't account for all of the data.
Nevertheless, Levesque argues that it is reasonable to concentrate on dust in the system since scientists anticipate that large, developing stars would lose material that ends up in orbit, even if future systems don't look precisely like this one.
“„
It's delightfully not too strange; it's the type of thing that you would anticipate,
she said.
However, "dust does not appear this clean," therefore such an order would suggest a very uncommon distribution pattern.
And although it's natural to speculate that an alien megastructure may have passed in front of the star, Wright believes that theory isn't ready for prime time just yet.
Something Large Made a Giant Star Disappear for 200 Days
Suleman Shah is a researcher and freelance writer. As a researcher, he has worked with MNS University of Agriculture, Multan (Pakistan) and Texas A & M University (USA). He regularly writes science articles and blogs for science news website immersse.com and open access publishers OA Publishing London and Scientific Times. He loves to keep himself updated on scientific developments and convert these developments into everyday language to update the readers about the developments in the scientific era. His primary research focus is Plant sciences, and he contributed to this field by publishing his research in scientific journals and presenting his work at many Conferences.
Shah graduated from the University of Agriculture Faisalabad (Pakistan) and started his professional carrier with Jaffer Agro Services and later with the Agriculture Department of the Government of Pakistan. His research interest compelled and attracted him to proceed with his carrier in Plant sciences research. So, he started his Ph.D. in Soil Science at MNS University of Agriculture Multan (Pakistan). Later, he started working as a visiting scholar with Texas A&M University (USA).
Shah’s experience with big Open Excess publishers like Springers, Frontiers, MDPI, etc., testified to his belief in Open Access as a barrier-removing mechanism between researchers and the readers of their research. Shah believes that Open Access is revolutionizing the publication process and benefitting research in all fields.
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