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Scientists who sifted through the radio astronomy data were stunned to discover a series of ghostly circles suspended in space that are unlike any known object that has ever been discovered.
Researchers stumbled upon the headache cosmic phenomenon while looking at images collected by Australia’s groundbreaking Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder telescope.
Thanks to its extraordinary ability to map large areas of space, both in record time and with great density, the revolutionary telescope can peer into parts of the universe that have not previously been seen.
While sifting through images of a pilot project to map millions of galaxies, scientists identified many of the mysterious blobs using only the power of their eyes.
They dubbed the phenomenon “Odd Radio Circles” – ORC, for short – and they set about trying to figure out what exactly they were. Initially, astronomers thought ORCs could be caused by a software bug. However, they continued to confirm the existence of the blobs using other telescopes.
In a future article on apparitions, they look into all the possibilities and are left with the daunting conclusion that ORCs look like nothing else that has already been discovered.
Among the potential causes already eliminated are intense explosions of star formation in another galaxy, jets of electrons shooting out of a supermassive black hole and the remnants of a supernova in the Milky Way.
“We need to explore things that may exist but have not yet been observed, such as a vast shockwave from an explosion in a distant galaxy,” one of the team, Professor Ray Norris, of Western Sydney University, wrote in an article published on the academic and research platform The Conversation.
Such explosions may have something to do with fast radio bursts or collisions between neutron stars and black holes that generate gravitational waves.
The mystery surrounding the objects is so great that experts don’t even know how far they are in the universe.
They calculate that there are around 1,000 ORCs, and now telescopes around the world are diligently scanning the skies for the bizarre spots, which is a tough job, because they’re faint and hard to find.
“Our team is brainstorming all of these ideas and more, hoping for the eureka moment when one of us, or perhaps someone else, suddenly has the flash of inspiration that solves the puzzle.” Norris added.
“It is an exciting time for us. Most astronomical research aims to refine our knowledge of the universe or to test theories. Very rarely do we have the challenge of stumbling upon a new type of object that no one has ever seen before and trying to understand what it is.
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