Astronomers spot unidentifiable 'circular' phenomena over Australia - New York Post

Australian astronomers have detected a series of inexplicable signals that they believe could be “a new class of astronomical object.”.

A team of international researchers at the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), in the continent’s Western region, has dubbed the objects “odd radio circles,” or ORCs.

Their study describe four ORCs, which appear as glowing orbs, three of which have distinct, bright rings around the circular object — and ruled out several possible explanations for their existence.

“Circular features are well-known in radio astronomical images, and usually represent a spherical object such as a supernova remnant, a planetary nebula, a circumstellar shell, or a face-on disc such as a protoplanetary disc or a star-forming galaxy,” they wrote in their report.

Here we report the discovery of a class of circular feature in radio images that do not seem to correspond to any of these known types of object or [artifact], but rather appear to be a new class of astronomical object,” they explained.

Furthermore, archival data from the Giant MetreWave Radio Telescope in India confirmed the presence of one of the ORCs discovered at ASKAP.

“[The objects] may well point to a new phenomenon that we haven’t really probed yet,” said Kristine Spekkens, from the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen’s University.

“It may also be that these are an extension of a previously known class of objects that we haven’t been able to explore,” Spekkens, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science on Wednesday.

Scientists for the EMU project have said that upcoming studies of radio wavelengths could uncover some 70 million new radio objects, adding to their current log of just 2.5 million such phenomena.

“This is a really nice indication of the shape of things to come in radio astronomy in the next couple of years,” added Spekkens?

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