A Puzzling Heartbeat 15,000 Light-Years Away
Scanning the crowded galactic plane, an international collaboration has stumbled on what may be a brand-new class of cosmic engine: a compact source inside the Milky Way that flares at radio wavelengths and in X-rays at the identical cadence—once every 44 minutes, like clockwork. No existing catalogue entry matches the combination, the team concludes.
What the Telescopes Saw
- Chandra X-ray Observatory, during an unrelated snapshot of a nearby supernova remnant, recorded short, intense pulses of high-energy photons.
- At precisely those moments, ground-based radio dishes caught synchronous bursts.
- The paired signals waxed and waned across seven cycles in a row, cementing the 44-minute interval.
Cosmic Candidates on the Table
Magnetised Remnants
Dr Ziteng Andy Wang from Curtin University notes the source may be an overachieving neutron star or white dwarf with a record-breaking magnetic field, able to funnel charged particles into tight beams. Such objects usually rotate in fractions of seconds, not nearly three quarters of an hour.
Something Entirely New
Alternatively, the object might occupy a “dead zone” in the theory map—an exotic phase of stellar death that has never before been observed in electromagnetic radiation.
Significance of the Discovery
The find marks the first time X-rays have been definitively linked to a long-period radio transient, a small and poorly understood family of sporadic radio emitters. If the 44-minute rhythm holds, astronomers can plan coordinated multi-wavelength campaigns, turning this lone beacon into a Rosetta Stone for peculiar collapsed stars.
The study appears in the latest issue of Nature.
A Cosmic Flash in the Deep: Chandra Unlocks the Mystery of ASKAP J1832-091
At the edge of a supernova’s glowing debris lies ASKAP J1832-091, a celestial enigma that blinked in X-rays for only a handful of weeks, then vanished.
How Astronomers First Spotted the Phantom
- Blue glow: NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory captured high-energy photons escaping the object.
- Radiant tapestry: Infrared hues—cyan, teal, and fiery orange—from Spitzer map warm dust, while radio reds supplied by South Africa’s MeerKAT array outline shock-swept filaments.
- Zoomed-in inset: A razor-sharp overlay of X-rays and radio waves isolates the fleeting spark at the supernova remnant’s border.
The Month-Long Pulse That Started It All
The flare lasted roughly 30 Earth days. Outside that narrow window, no X-ray signal registers—just cosmic quiet.
If ASKAP J1832-091 sits within the supernova remnant, its sudden awakening hints at an exotic stellar cadaver powering up; if it lurks far in the background, physicists may be witnessing an entirely unfamiliar breed of source.
What the Numbers Mean
- 5.8 trillion miles — the reach of a single light-year, a measuring tape too short to pinpoint the object’s true address.
- Since 1999 — the year Chandra was launched, placing it in an orbit tens of thousands of miles above Earth’s restless atmosphere.
Wang’s Dilemma
“Each observation nudges us toward two competing ideas,” explains lead researcher Wang.
Either we have stumbled upon an absolutely new inhabitant of the universe, or a familiar cosmic resident talking to us in a radio and X-ray dialect we have never heard.”
A Quiet Telescope Listening for the Next Whisper
Hurtling in silence overhead, Chandra keeps watch as the most potent X-ray eye humanity has ever deployed. Around the planet, scientists wait for another flicker—another clue—to decode the secret life of ASKAP J1832-091 and the countless companions that might be hiding in the dark.
