Scientists have succeeded in solving the mystery of this strange signal.
Wednesday, 27 Nov 2024 05:44:15 illustration of signals in space (©chatgpt)
Mikhail Medvedev, an astrophysicist from the University of Kansas, solved the mystery of a strange signal emitted from a dead star to Earth which is 6,200 light years from Earth.
The signal was emitted from a dead star that exploded in 1054 AD called the Crab Pulsar which was discovered in 1966. This Crab Pulsar is very small and very dense, the heaviest one has a mass of up to 2.3 times the mass of the Sun and forms a ball with a width of only 20 kilometers.
Anyone else asking too?
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What mysterious signal did NASA discover? ‘This is something unexpected and as yet unexplained outside our galaxy,’ said Francis Reddy from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, quoted by Indy100, Saturday (20/1).
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Where did the space signal come from? ‘We found a gamma-ray dipole, but its peak was in the southern sky, far from the CMB, and was 10 times larger than what we expected from our motion,’ said Chris Shrader, an astrophysicist at Goddard.
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How do stars die? Stars can die in two main ways, depending on their mass. For low-mass stars, nuclear fusion ends when all the hydrogen in the star’s core has been converted to helium. Without the external heat and pressure of fusion, the star would collapse in on itself.
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Who discovered the star? ‘This star provides a unique window into the earliest element formation processes in galaxies other than our own,’ says astrophysicist Anirudh Chiti of the University of Chicago, who led the research.
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How does this mysterious star blink? Strangely enough, it flashes on and off when rotating towards or away from Earth.
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What is the mysterious light that appears in the sky? Reported by the Jerusalem Post, a number of security monitoring cameras in one of the residential areas captured a flash of blue light in the sky about three minutes before the earthquake occurred.
The Crab Pulsar emits pulses of radio light towards Earth. In these radio pulses there is a strange signal shaped like a mysterious Zebra pattern that confused astronomers for almost two decades ago, in 2007.
The result of the interaction between the magnetic field plasma in the star
Pulsars are a type of neutron star that emit radio waves from their poles.
As the star rotates at incredible speeds, these jets are like lighthouse rays that sweep across the Earth in such a way that the star appears to pulsate.
Meanwhile, the Crab Pulsar has a rotation period of about 33 milliseconds, which means it beats about 30 times per second.
Reported by the Science Alert page, Tuesday (26/11), the study conducted by Mikhail Medvedev was published in the journal Physical Review Letters. He said the signal was an interference pattern produced by the diffraction of light by different plasma densities within the pulsar’s magnetosphere.
“This is the only object we know of that produces a zebra pattern, and it only appears in one emission component of the Crab Pulsar. The main pulse is a wideband pulse, which is common to most pulsars,” Medvedev said.
“However, the high-frequency interpulse is unique, with a frequency ranging between 5 and 30 gigahertz, a frequency similar to the frequency in a microwave oven,” Medvedev said.
Medvedev took these data based on the assumption that the zebra patterns were diffraction fringes and developed a model based on wave optics to calculate the pulsar plasma density.
The model accurately replicates observations that provide a deft explanation for the pulsar’s strange behavior. When radio waves came out of the pulsar, it was found that the interaction between the plasma and the magnetic field produced a diffraction interference pattern that looked like zig-zag zebra stripes.
“A typical diffraction pattern would produce evenly spaced fringes if we only had a neutron star as a shield,” Medvedev said.
“The Crab Pulsar is relatively young by astronomical standards, only about a thousand years old, and very energetic,” Medvedev said.
However, the pulsar is not alone. Medvedev and his team know of hundreds of pulsars, with more than a dozen also young. The known binary pulsars, which were used to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, can also be explored with similar methods.
Intern Reporter: Elma Pinkan Yulianti
(Lights up, Jimmy Carr’s dry wit in full effect) Ah, the mysteries of the universe. Because, let’s be honest, we’ve already solved all the mysteries on Earth. I mean, we’ve got reality TV, haven’t we? (pauses for comedic effect)
Now, scientists have finally cracked the code on a strange signal from a dead star, the Crab Pulsar, which, by the way, is about as exciting as it sounds. It’s like the celestial equivalent of a tired granny who just won’t stop sending patterns on the old VHF radio. (in a Rowan Atkinson-esque deadpan) Oh, the thrill.
So, here’s the story: this Crab Pulsar, located a whopping 6,200 light-years from us, has been emitting a signal since 1054 AD. That’s even older than Ricky Gervais’s stand-up routines. (Ricky Gervais’s voice) “Oh, hello, hello! ‘M using the past to make a joke! Boom!”
But I digress. This signal was puzzling astronomers for almost two decades, until Mikhail Medvedev, a brilliant astrophysicist from the University of Kansas, finally figured out what’s going on. It turns out the signal is an interference pattern produced by the diffraction of light by different plasma densities within the pulsar’s magnetosphere. Yeah, because that’s exactly what I want to hear on a Wednesday afternoon: “plasma densities” and “magnetosphere.”
Now, I’m not a scientist, but I’ll try to simplify it for you: basically, the pulsar is like a lighthouse, emitting radio waves that bounce off different parts of its own magnetic field, creating this “zebra pattern” (Lee Evans’s voice) “Ooh, stripes, lovely stripes!”.
Medvedev’s team used clever wave optics to calculate the pulsar’s plasma density and, ta-da! The model accurately replicates the observations. It’s like solving a cosmic puzzle, except instead of pieces, you have science-y things like “diffraction fringes” and “neutron stars.”
As Medvedev points out, this discovery is exciting because it could help us understand more about young, energetic pulsars like the Crab Pulsar. And who knows? Maybe one day we’ll find a way to communicate with them, or even use their signals to create an intergalactic podcast. Stranger things have happened, right? (winks)
All joking aside, this breakthrough is a testament to human curiosity and the power of scientific inquiry. And if you’re wondering what’s next, well, who knows? Maybe we’ll discover the secrets of the universe, or maybe we’ll just find more weird signals to obsess over. Either way, it’s all part of the grand adventure that is being human.
And on that profound note, it’s time to wrap up this article. Stay curious, folks, and remember: the universe is full of mysteries waiting to be solved – or at least, waiting to be made fun of.
