(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists have discovered mysterious objects in the universe, which they called strange radio circles. No one knows what it is.
The discovery is described in a preprint of a scientific article published on arXiv.org.
Astronomers working with the Australian ASKAP radio telescope have discovered three mysterious objects. Another similar object was found by the authors in the archive data of the Indian GMRT radio telescope. This confirms that strange radio circles (odd radio circles, or ORCs) are real, and not the result of an error at the Australian observatory.
“It is not known what” has a rounded shape. Moreover, three of the four objects at the edges are brighter than in the center – this is a kind of ring or bubble. All four objects are visible only in the radio range: they are not detected in the data of optical, infrared and X-ray telescopes.
ORC are not similar to any known celestial bodies, which earned their name. True, astronomers know several classes of round objects, but none of them are suitable for one reason or another. So, planetary nebulae have a different spectrum. Radiocircles cannot be supernova remnants: they are too rare, and it is extremely unlikely that four such objects “crowded” in a small area of the sky.
The apparent diameter of the ORC is about one arcminute (about one-thirtieth of the lunar disk).
How big are these objects really? This is unknown because the distance to them remains a mystery. They can be relatively small and located in the Milky Way or exceed the size of entire galaxies and be very far away. In both cases, the size visible from Earth will be the same.
Astronomers still tend to think that ORCs are outside the Milky Way. Firstly, in the celestial sphere they are located outside the plane of the Galaxy, where the vast majority of its stars and other objects are located. Secondly, when viewed from the Earth, the centers of two of the four radio circles are their own galaxies.
Meanwhile, it cannot be ruled out that these galaxies have nothing to do with the circles, but simply accidentally appeared against their background. In other words, we simply look at these stellar systems through radio circles in the same way as we can look at the Sun through spread fingers.
The authors suggest that they are dealing with a shock wave from some kind of cosmic cataclysm. Possible examples are collisions of neutron stars, gamma-ray bursts and fast radio bursts.
Another hypothesis is that we have before us a stream of matter flowing out of galaxies.
Meanwhile, none of the explanations answers all the questions that have arisen, so scientists still have to figure out what they found.
The scientific work of the authors was sent for publication in the prestigious journal Nature Astronomy. At the moment, it is being analyzed by experts involved in the magazine.
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