Close Menu
    Scientists locate source of mysterious radio signals after 20 year search: A vampire star and its victim
    Space

    Scientists locate source of mysterious radio signals after 20 year search: A vampire star and its victim

    Share.
    View 5 Comments

    5 Comments

    1. yahoonews on

      [Space.com](https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/scientists-locate-source-mysterious-radio-210000586.html?ncid=redditnewsus) reports – The clashing magnetic fields of a white dwarf star and its neighboring red dwarf star are the source of signals from space that have remained a puzzle for over 20 years, radio astronomers in Australia have found.

      The signals, or long-period radio transients, are a class of celestial radio emissions discovered in 2005. Most radio-producing objects release bursts that last for mere seconds or less, but long-period radio transients, about a dozen of which are known, produce radio waves in bursts lasting from minutes to over an hour.

      Speculation had focused on highly magnetic pulsars called magnetars as the origin of these radio bursts, but now new research led by Kovi Rose of the University of Sydney, using the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope, has shown that symbiotic binaries are to blame for at least some long-period radio transients.

      Symbiotic binaries feature a compact object — usually a white dwarf, which is the core remains of a sun-like star — stealing matter from a close companion star. This scenario often leads to a nova explosion when too much material accretes onto the surface of the white dwarf.

    2. SlowCrates on

      Knowing this, what kind of implications does that give for the Wow! signal, if anything?

    3. Traditional-Yak-1479 on

      a vampire star is a white dwarf slowly stealing mass from a companion star. as the stolen material builds up on the surface it eventually hits a pressure threshold and triggers a thermonuclear explosion. the white dwarf survives, the material burns off, and the whole cycle starts again. what’s wild is that this repeating explosion is what produces the ultra-precise radio pulses they were trying to trace for 20 years.

    4. Andromeda321 on

      Astronomer here! Still not aliens! In fact, people have thought this was the case for some time now for these signals, but it’s been tough to know for sure without a direct detection, which is what we see here!

      Basically, [Long Period Radio Transients (LPTs)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Period_Radio_Transients) are as the name implies a burst of radio emission that repeats over a long period (minutes to hours, as opposed to pulsars which are once every few seconds as most). There’s nothing artificial about the signal- it just looks like a natural burst of polarized emission- but due to the repetition and time scale involved it’s tougher to think of the mechanism that could be causing it.

      One of the leading ideas however was that a [white dwarf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf)- a stellar remnant like what our sun will be like someday- is interacting with a companion, in this case a red dwarf (still a normal star but a very small one). A white dwarf is more dense than a red dwarf, leading in this case to material from the red dwarf shedding onto the white dwarf. This then is what causes the flare- the two orbit each other about once an hour in this discovery case, hence why we see the flare about once an hour.

      So yeah, exciting that we’ve finally pinpointed an actual system causing this behavior! I heard about this result at a meeting in Sydney last year so happy to see it finally out. 🙂