Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizens for the clue delivery of the holy Buddha! Not long ago, when astronomers were looking at historical data, they found that in the 1980s the earth had received a mysterious signal from the direction of the shield constellation 15000 light-years away. The signal is carried by a set of radio pulses of 30 seconds and 300 seconds and is repeated every 22 minutes. The point is that this signal with fixed time intervals has been going on for 35 years, and to this day it continues to transmit to Earth.

However, astronomers are also confused about the source of this mysterious signal. Because the nature of the wave was so strange that they searched all the theories and models could not match it.

For netizens who watch the hustle and bustle, "from alien civilization" is the most attractive and convenient explanation. But for pragmatic scientists, this possibility is always last. After all, there are so many unknown natural phenomena that it is not the turn to throw the pot at the aliens.

In fact, astronomers receive a lot of strange electromagnetic signals every day, most of which are generated by celestial bodies such as pulsars. But compared with the pulsar signal, this time the signal has very different characteristics.

We know that a pulsar generally refers to a neutron star that is highly magnetized and rotates at a high speed. Its magnetic pole emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation, and when the beam sweeps through the earth, we can capture a pulse signal.

Speaking of this by the way, many people have doubts: neutron stars are not electrons pressed into the nucleus, combined with protons to form neutrons, neutrons are not charged how can there be a magnetic field?

In fact, a neutron star is not a large pile of neutrons as expected, and its structure is very complex. For example, its outside is usually thought of as an iron shell, and there may be free quarks that break through quark confinement or hyperon matter including odd quarks in the core in an ultra-high density environment, and there is no final conclusion on this.

In short, this kind of neutron star can not only have a magnetic field, but also usually has a very strong magnetic field. At present, the record of the strongest magnetic field on the earth's surface is 1200 Tesla, set by the University of Tokyo in Japan. although it only lasted for a moment and blew up the laboratory with lightning all the way, these are all pediatrics in front of the neutron star.

The magnetic field theory of neutron stars can be as high as tens of thousands or even hundreds of millions of Tesla, so they are also called magnetars.

The pulse periods of these magnetars are generally very short because, as the remnants of stars, neutron stars inherit the angular momentum of previous stars. Because it is only the core of the star and is extremely compressed, the size of the neutron star is like a house compared to the star compared to the earth. Because of the large reduction in volume and the conservation of angular momentum, these neutron stars have extremely high rotational speeds, and some even rotate in only a few milliseconds, so they are called millisecond pulsars (MSP).

But with the passage of time, the neutron star will also slowly "grow old". They gradually lose angular momentum and slow down, while the magnetic field weakens. If the magnetic field of a neutron star is too weak, it can no longer produce high-energy rays, which means that the life of the neutron star is over, and this threshold is called the "death line" of the neutron star.

If the source of the mysterious signal is a neutron star, it is clear that the neutron star is so old that it does not have the strength to emit high-energy radio waves. But the 22-minute cycle means that although it has crossed the death line, it is still alive!

It's like a normal person's blood pressure and pulse have at the same time, but there is a person who no longer has a pulse (normally he can be judged to be dead), but finds that his blood pressure still exists, which is very strange.

So either there are other undiscovered mechanisms, or this person is not an ordinary person, for example, it is not a neutron star, but a white dwarf star.

Also as stellar debris, white dwarfs are usually formed after the death of small-mass stars such as the sun. Because they are in electron degeneracy rather than neutron degeneracy (electrons have not yet been pressed into the nucleus), white dwarfs are much larger than neutron stars. In terms of the conservation of angular momentum alone, this makes the rotation of white dwarfs much slower than that of neutron stars.

Although the origin of magnetic field has always been a common problem in astronomy, in some theoretical models, white dwarfs may have planetary-like generator principles inside them, so that they can also produce super-strong magnetic fields. For such highly magnetized white dwarf magnetars, it is not impossible to produce pulsar-like radio beams.

With magnetic fields, radio beams and slower rotation periods, this model of white dwarfs seems to explain this 35-year-old mysterious signal. However, this explanation is still a bit far-fetched, because astronomers have not yet found similar samples of white dwarf pulsars. A white dwarf pulsar has been found in a binary system before, but its pulse is generated by the interaction of companion stars, and the brightness of the radio beam is three orders of magnitude lower than this signal.

So whether there is something wrong with the magnetar theory, or whether this thing is a completely new celestial body, or is there any other possibility, the reason behind this is what astronomers need to continue to explore.

There is really any possibility for the abnormal signal received, and some reasons are even difficult for people to laugh or cry after they are identified. Finally, I will tell you about a real Oolong incident in history.

In 1998, the Parks Radio Telescope in Australia detected a very strange radio signal. The signal has a special frequency, which is high and then low and then stable. What's even weirder is that the signal reappears at noon every day. It's a coincidence that this signal source has the same time period as Earth, whether it's from an alien or not.

Astronomers have often monitored this strange radio signal for more than a decade from 1998 to 2015, and many scientists have studied it and published many papers.

Later, a researcher decided to be more serious and prepared to carry out a detailed study. The first thing he had to eliminate was human interference. Given that the radio signal is close to the microwave band and that it always appears at lunchtime, he set his sights on the microwave oven in the canteen.

He noticed that some employees often open the door of the microwave oven without waiting for the end. Then he made a special test for this scene, and the results showed that the signal frequency was really high and then low and then stabilized, which was exactly the same as the legendary mysterious signal. At this point, the truth of the mysterious radio signal finally came out.

Therefore, it can be seen that it is sometimes not enough to rely on profound knowledge and hard-core technology to engage in scientific research, and rigorous logic and keen insight are often very important.

references

[1] https://www.space.com/slow-magnetar-neutron-star-physics

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPM_J1839%E2%88%9210

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06202-5

[4] http://china.cnr.cn/gdgg/20230727/t20230727_526348256.shtml

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Linvo says ID:linvo001, author: Linvo

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