Do spaceships exist? Are aliens real? Are we alone in the Universe? Although many people ask these questions, they still don't seem to have an objective answer. However, some research on the Universe presents data, to say the least, intriguing.
One, conducted by the University of Sydney in late 2020, identified unknown objects that were sending signals from the heart of the Milky Way. But soon after that, they disappeared from researchers' radars. Portal Insider presented the details on the topic.
The discovery was made by Ziteng Wang, a doctoral student in physics at the University. She was sorting through the 2 million objects that the research group captured with Australia's ASKAP radio telescope, one by one. Between supernova explosions and many stars, computers got confused when classifying an object at the center of the galaxy.
In nine months, this object emitted six strong radio waves. The pattern of transmissions was irregular and did not look like anything that had been identified before. Furthermore, the researchers could not find such an object with X-rays, visible light or infrared light, which is quite unusual.
Also, the object's radio signal disappeared, even though it had been monitored for so many months with two radio telescopes. However, approximately a year after it was first detected, the mysterious object reappeared. And disappeared again.
Tara Murphy, a professor who leads the research group, said in an interview with Insider that scientists still don't know what behaves this way. Despite this, the researchers knew that it was not a star or any other object that had already been captured in history.
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Without precise information about what the radio telescopes found, the team classified the object as a GCRT, galactic center radio transient. Prior to Wang's discovery, three other objects were also classified this way. The name chosen is only provisional, until they understand what these bodies really are.
While GCRTs have been a mystery for decades and each one is different, Murphy told Insider that he is "100% sure" they are not alien signals. Therefore, research on the four existing GCRTs to date continues.
A decade of research has resulted in just 3 GCRTs
In the 1990s, telescopes began investigating the low radio frequencies of the Milky Way's center, in research led by Scott Hyman's team. However, it was not until the early 2000s that the first unknown signal appeared.
After the discovery, the signal grew stronger, then disappeared. As in the most recent case, it was also not possible to identify the object that emitted the signal through X-rays. After three years, another object of this type appeared, but sending different signals than the first.
The third GCRTs were identified with later research. The researchers believed they would find new objects of this type, but that's not what happened. Even with Wang's most recent discovery, little is known about this phenomenon.
Astronomers will only have unsatisfactory theories until they discover more GCRTs
In an interview with Insider, Murphy stated that astronomers have theories about GCRTs, but none of them are very satisfying. They could be neutron stars or stars that are slowly losing energy, sending out irregular signals.
For Hyman, there are still more GCRTs to be discovered amid the murky dust of the Milky Way. In addition to continuing to observe the center of the galaxy with ASKAP, the researcher is anxiously awaiting the completion of the Square Kilometer Array observatory, which will be ready in 2028 and which will be ideal for this type of analysis.
On the possibility of unraveling the GCRTs, Hyman stated: “I'm really hopeful that we can redetect these three objects, find out what they are. They may be lurking in a very weak, quiescent state. They might just be very faint now, and still detectable with a very sensitive instrument.”
Source: Insider
