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Objects reminiscent of distant circular islands have been called strange radio circles, or KRAs, for their shape and originality, writes livescience.com. Astronomers don’t yet know how far away these objects are, but they may be related to distant galaxies. The four objects were found furthest from the plane of the Milky Way galaxy and are approximately one arc minute in diameter (by comparison, the Moon’s diameter is 31 arcs per minute).
In the new scientific work describing the discovery, astronomers provide several possible explanations, but none of them apply to all four CRAs. Rejecting variants such as supernovae, star-forming galaxies, planetary nebulae, and the space-time-increasing effect distorted by nearby massive celestial bodies, astronomers speculate that the mysterious CRAs may be after some shock phenomenon outside of our galaxy or beyond. galaxies
“It just came to our attention then [objektai] It is a new phenomenon with which we are not familiar, said Kristine Spekkens, an astronomer at the Royal Canadian Military College and the University of Queens, who was not involved in the study. “They could also be new members of a known class of objects that we haven’t explored yet.”
K. Spekkens added that the reason for the origin of foreign objects may be a completely different phenomenon. All four KRAs emit brilliant radio waves but are invisible in visible, infrared, and X-ray spectra. It is true that there are galaxies in the center of the two KRAs, so it is likely that they formed there. The other two CRAs are quite close to each other, so their origins may be common.
Astronomers detected three strange objects while studying the radio frequencies of the night sky: this was the pilot phase of a new project, The Map of the Evolution of the Universe. During their time, in 2019. Between July and November, astronomers used Australia’s range of square kilometer telescopes. This set of radio telescopes consists of 36 antennas, which together capture radio signals over a large area of the night sky.
A fourth KRA was detected in archival data collected by the Indian Giant MetreWave radio telescope. The data helped astronomers confirm that the object is real and not some kind of anomaly caused by the performance characteristics of Australian square kilometer series radio telescopes or the nature of the data analysis.
With only four mysterious objects identified, astronomers are still unable to determine their origin. On the other hand, the “Map of the Evolution of the Universe” project is just beginning, and astronomers hope to find more unusual objects. The project mentioned above is perfect for this, because the technology used in it allows to capture very weak radio waves and also covers a large area of the sky. Participating scientists predict that about 70 million will be detected. New broadcasting facilities to complement the current catalog of around 2.5 million recommendations.
“These discoveries are a great testament to the amazing things that await radio astronomy in the years to come,” Spekkens told LiveScience. “History shows that when we start exploring a new area of space, we always find extremely interesting things.”
The research, which can be found on the prX arXiv portal, has been submitted for publication in the journal Nature Astronomy and is currently being reviewed.
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