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The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula

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Something in space has been lighting up every 20 minutes since 1988 (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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On Wednesday, researchers announced the discovery of a new astronomical enigma. The new object, GPM J1839–10, behaves a bit like a pulsar, sending out regular bursts of radio energy. But the physics that drives pulsars means that they'd stop emitting if they slowed down too much, and almost every pulsar we know of blinks at least once per minute.

GPM J1839–10 takes 22 minutes between pulses. We have no idea what kind of physics or what kind of objects can power that.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's the most likely answer, but they're not certain. As they don't even have a solid theory of how a star can spin so slowly and still be this active.