Although you never know what terrifying threats could lurk into the shadows when it comes to the depths of space, it may be worth the exploration. Diving deep into the unknown and learning new things generally represent a wonderful journey, and astronomers know this very well.
Scientists thought that they had uncovered over the years all types of the ‘big stuff’ existing out there: galaxies, stars, planets, quasars, clusters of galaxies, black holes, pulsars, nebulae, and more. But not so fast, says the Universe itself while smiling at us.
Four objects spotted in radio wavelengths
Astronomers recently discovered four faint objects that are highly circular at radio wavelengths and brighter along the edges. The objects resemble ring-shaped islands, and they have been dubbed as odd radio circles (ORCs). Although it’s practically impossible at this stage to say for sure what the mysterious objects are, astronomers speculate that they could be shockwaves leftover coming from some event beyond our galaxy or possibly activity belonging to a radio galaxy.
These mysterious structures can only be seen by radio telescopes. They’re completely undetectable to X-ray and infrared telescopes. The scientists involved say that they “do not seem to correspond to any known type of object,”
Kristine Spekkens, who is an astronomer at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen’s University, declared:
[The objects] may well point to a new phenomenon that we haven’t really probed yet,
It may also be that these are an extension of a previously known class of objects that we haven’t been able to explore.
The researchers also added:
[I]f the ORCs are [supernova remnants (SNRs)], which they strongly resemble, then this implies a population of SNRs in the Galaxy some 50 times larger than the currently accepted figure, or else a new class of SNR which has not previously been reported,
The study paper was published on arXiv.
