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Astronomers Discover a New Source of Curious Radio Waves 5.000 Light-Years Away
In recent years, a series of intriguing radio signals have challenged astronomers' understanding. The first clue came from a radio telescope in the Western Australian desert, which detected a strange radio signal coming from 4.000 light years from Earth.
The radio signal flashed like a pulsar, but with a much longer interval between pulses and an unusual pulse duration.
These characteristics, until then inexplicable, led the scientists to investigate further what could be causing such emissions.
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After the discovery of the first radio signal, similar ones were identified at even greater distances, such as one emitted from 15.000 light-years away, making the task of finding an explanation even more difficult.
But it was a third discovery, some 5.000 light-years away, that finally revealed the origin of these mysterious emissions: a binary star system consisting of a red dwarf star and a white dwarf.
The discoveries that challenged science
In 2022, astronomers discovered intermittent signals recorded by the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a low-frequency radio telescope.
The first discovery, known as GLEAM-X J162759.5−523504.3, emitted radio waves lasting 30 to 60 seconds, every 18 minutes.
However, this signal stopped emitting in 2018, leaving scientists without answers. In 2023, another radio signal, GPM J1839-10, was found from additional MWA observations.
This, in turn, emitted bursts of radio waves at a frequency of 22 minutes, having been detected since 1988.
These signals were initially attributed to pulsars, which are neutron stars that emit beams of radio waves as they rotate.
However, the characteristics of the observed signals do not exactly match the expected behavior of pulsars, mainly due to their duration and specific intervals between pulses.
Hurley-Walker et al. )
The final answer: a rare star system
The most recent discovery, GLEAM-X J0704-37, proved to be the key to understanding these signals.
Detected in a much less congested region of the sky, this radio signal peculiar was traced to a failed star in a distant region of the Milky Way, in the constellation puppies.
A spectral analysis of the star revealed that it was an M-type red dwarf, a very common type of star in the galaxy but invisible to the naked eye due to its low luminosity.
However, the mere presence of a red dwarf did not explain the radio emissions. The team of astronomers led by astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker suggested that there was something else in this star system: a white dwarf, the collapsed remnant of a dead star.
This ultra-dense object, with up to 1,4 times the mass of the Sun, may be generating the radio beams from interactions with the red dwarf.
What is behind radio waves?
Calculations indicate that the two stars may be in close enough orbit that the white dwarf is accreting material from the red dwarf.
This “feeding” process could generate the observed radio waves, with intense beams coming out of the white dwarf’s poles.
Although there is still no direct notification of the presence of the white dwarf, more observations, both in radio and ultraviolet, are being conducted to confirm this theory.
If confirmed, this discovery would make GLEAM-X J0704-37 one of the rarest types of pulsar known, a white dwarf pulsar.
Such a discovery would not only help solve the mystery of these curious signals, but would also expand our understanding of binary systems and the characteristics that occur when stars of different types interact in such complex ways.
This study, led by an international astronomy collaboration, promises to redefine our knowledge of stars, their interactions and the mysterious radio emissions that continue to challenge scientists with each new discovery.
