Something strange is sending radio waves from the centre of the galaxy
Leah Crane
Leah Crane
Quote:The fact that it wasn’t visible in any other wavelengths ruled out several possible explanations for this object, including normal stars and magnetars, which are neutron stars with powerful magnetic fields.
Whatever Andy’s object is, the polarisation of the radio waves coming from it indicates that it probably has a strong magnetic field. During flares, its brightness varied by up to a factor of 100, and those flares faded extraordinarily quickly – as fast as a single day – facts that suggest the object is small.
But no astronomical body we know of fits all of those strange traits. “It’s an interesting object that has confounded any attempt we have to explain it,” says Kaplan. “It could turn out to be part of a known class of objects, just a weird example, but that’ll push the boundaries of how we think those classes behave.”
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
- Bertrand Russell