(CNN) — There’s a mysterious new kind of object in space, and following capturing their best image to date, astronomers are one step closer to understanding these strange celestial balls.
They are known as odd radius circles (ORC). Though thinking of ORCs may bring to mind the goblin-like humanoids from the books of The Lord of the ringsthese fascinating objects have baffled scientists since they were first discovered in 2020.
Astronomers found the odd-radius circles using the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope, operated by Australia’s national science agency CSIRO, or the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, two years ago.
Data from the MeerKAT telescope (in green) showing the radius circles are overlaid on optical and near-infrared data from the Dark Energy Survey.
These space rings are so massive that they measure regarding a million light-years across, 16 times larger than our Milky Way.
Astronomers believe that the circles take 1 billion years to reach their maximum size, and are so large that the objects have expanded beyond other galaxies.
Now, a new image taken by the South African Radio Astronomical Observatory’s MeerKAT telescope provides more detail and information. (MeerKat is short for Karoo Array Telescope, preceded by the Afrikaans word meaning “more.”) The image and results were published Monday in the academic journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Three Possible Theories
Initially, astronomers thought that the strange circles might be galactic shock waves or even the throats of the wormholesamong a whole series of ideas.
Now, the researchers have narrowed the range of theories down to three.
The odd-radius circles might be the remains of a huge explosion at the center of a galaxy, similar to what happens when two supermassive black holes merge.
Second, they might be powerful jets that pump energetic particles from the center of the galaxy.
Or, the third possibility is that they are the result of a starburst shock wave triggered by the birth of stars in a galaxy.
So far, only five circles of odd radius have been found in space.
The ASKAP radio telescope is located in Western Australia.
“We know that ORCs are rings of faint radio emissions surrounding a galaxy with a very active black hole at its center, but we don’t yet know what causes them or why they are so rare,” said co-author Ray Norris in a statement. of the study and professor at the University of Western Sydney and the CSIRO.
Until now, circles of odd radius have only been found with telescopes that observe through radio wavelengths.
Visible light, infrared and X-ray telescopes have yet to detect them, despite their enormous size.
As radio telescope astronomers find more of them, those observations might help fill in the many gaps regarding these curious new objects.
“People often want to explain their observations and show that they fit our best knowledge. For me, it’s much more exciting to discover something new, that challenges our current understanding,” study author Jordan Collier, a specialist in Astronomy and Bioinformatics user support from the Interuniversity Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy in South Africa.
Collier produced the new image from data collected by MeerKAT.
The MeerKAT telescope, located in the Karoo region of South Africa, includes an array of 64 radio antennas and has been in operation since July 2018. The powerful telescope is sensitive to weak radio light.
The collaboration will allow astronomers to find more odd-radius circles, as more sensitive radio telescopes will in the future.
New high resolution telescope
MeerKAT is a precursor to an upcoming telescope, the transcontinental Square Kilometer Array or SKA, which is being built in both South Africa and Australia.
MeerKAT radio telescope dishes can be seen under a star-filled sky in Karoo, South Africa.
“Without a doubt, the SKA telescopes, once built, will find many more ORCs and will be able to tell us more regarding the life cycle of galaxies,” Norris said in a statement. “Until the SKA goes live, ASKAP and MeerKAT will revolutionize our understanding of the universe faster than ever.”
The array will include thousands of satellite dishes and up to a million low-frequency antennas in an effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope.
Even though these dishes and antennas will be in two different parts of the world, together they will create a telescope that has over a million square meters of collecting area, meaning astronomers can survey the entire sky much faster than with other telescopes.
In addition, it will exceed the image resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope and will allow wide images of the sky to be obtained in great detail.
