Over the past decade, scientists have detected a puzzling phenomenon: radio pulses coming from within our Milky Way galaxy that would pulse every two hours, like a cosmic heartbeat. The long radio blasts, which lasted between 30 and 90 seconds, appeared to come from the direction of the Ursa Major constellation, where the Big Dipper is located.
Not aliens 🙁
Now, astronomers have zeroed in on the surprising origin of the unusual radio pulses: a dead star, called a white dwarf, that is closely orbiting a small, cool red dwarf star. Red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the cosmos.
The two stars, known collectively as ILTJ1101, are orbiting each other so closely that their magnetic fields interact, emitting what’s known as a long period radio transient, or an LPT. Previously, long radio bursts were only traced to neutron stars, the dense remnants left after a colossal stellar explosion.
Bummer. Aliens would have been perfect for my 2025 bingo card.
And not the good ones like ET. We talking Predators and Independence Day.
Now if you’re thinking that it would solve all our problems cause humanity would unite against the common threat, I think you’d get a disappointing, pessimistic but pretty realistic wake up call.
I think most people are past the phase of uniting against a common threat and more in the “can someone just stop us, already? Because we are a shitshow” phase
Aaaaawww maaaaannnnn… :((
I think it is interesting that when pulsars (rapidly spinning neutron stars) were first discovered, a fairly serious competing explanation (before more data was gathered) was that they could be something like interstellar lighthouses.
Now… they are not artifically constructed… but, if somebody actually was in a situation like Adama finds himself in, in the BSG revamp… they could actually serve that purpose, given that they have pretty stable, intense and specific pulse frequencies… if you could find even a few you recognized, you might at least be able to broadly traingulate and figure out where the hell you are.
Either way, neat to find out there are even more ways nature can unintentionally produce a reasonably reliable clock.
That’s still pretty cool. Wish I had an alien gf tho.
It’s never aliens.
It’s always clickbait.
