- cross-posted to:
- space@kbin.social
- cross-posted to:
- space@kbin.social
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.
[Googles name of object.] 2nd result:
Science!
Read the article:
Just because some random Google result says it’s a magnetar doesn’t make it true. Considering the team that discovered it doesn’t make that claim and as far as I’m aware no one else has looked at this particular star, I think it unlikely that there’s a definitive, widely accepted explanation.
This is why I don’t trust Google excerpt results or Ai answers despite being widely accepted. They miss nuance
These days I feel like they’re flat out wrong nearly a third of the time
Magnetars are the most terrifyingly fascinating objects so far discovered. I’m cool with black holes having the ability to spaghettify me, that makes sense, that’s what gravity at an almost infinite scale does. Having something that generates a magnetic field strong enough to dis-associate my molecules I find very disconcerting.
Throw me at one at 0.99c.
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.