Mysterious Radio Signal Picked up from Space has Astronomers Baffled

Astronomers have discovered a neutron star unlike any other previously discovered after following a mystery Radio signal from space. Manisha Caleb, a lecturer at the University of Sydney, is the protagonist of the novel. She and her colleagues were looking at the Milky Way’s Vela-X 1 area, which is around 1,300 light years distant from Earth.

They saw a strange-looking light or ‘pulse’ that lasted around 300 milliseconds while utilising the MeerKAT Radio telescope in South Africa. ‘The flare resembled a -emitting neutron star in appearance.’ ‘However, this was unlike anything we’d ever seen before,’ she explained.

A neutron star is the remnant of a large supergiant star that has disintegrated. They are the tiniest and densest celestial objects known to man, aside from black holes. Pulsars are pulsars that release bursts of Radio waves that we can pick up here on Earth when they’re particularly dense.’Our observations revealed that PSR J0941-4046 [as the star was dubbed] has some of the properties of a “pulsar” or perhaps a “magnetar.” Pulsars are the dense relics of destroyed massive stars that emit Radio waves from their poles,’ Caleb stated. ‘The Radio pulses may be monitored from Earth as they spin, similar to how a lighthouse flashes regularly in the distance.’

Some aren’t as active as others, while some are utterly dead and inactive. ‘PSR J0941-4046 raises questions about how neutron stars form and develop,’ says the paper. Caleb remarked. ‘It’s especially intriguing since it appears to emit at least seven distinct pulse forms, when most neutron stars don’t show such diversity.’ This variation in pulse form, as well as pulse strength, is most likely due to the object’s unknown physical emission mechanism.’