Space exploration has provided us with a wealth of information, which has allowed us to create
inventions and technologies that have made human existence simpler while also allowing
us to discover more and explore farther into the cosmos.
What has NASA's telescope lately uncovered that defies all logic?
Join us today as we introduce you to some terrifying regions of the universe and explore
something that scientists cannot explain.
WASP-76b is one of numerous exoplanets in the cosmos.
It is a scorching exoplanet located around 640 light-years distant from us.
However, the planet is also notorious for having a perpetual dark side and molten iron
rains.
It was discovered in 2016 and is approximately the size of Jupiter.
Since it is tidally locked to a star, the planet is always facing it.
The dayside temperature reaches 2,350 degrees Celsius (4,300 degrees Fahrenheit).
This is more than enough to evaporate metals like iron into the atmosphere.
Furthermore, the radiation received by the dayside is millions of times greater than
that received by our planet from the Sun.
The dark side of WASP-76b is nearly twice as cold.
Because of the high temperature differential, this exoplanet experiences severe winds.
As a result, the wind transports iron vapor from the hotter side of the globe to the cooler
side.
As the vapor cools, molten iron showers down on this planet.
That's strange enough, but not as strange as the planet known as PSR J1719-1438b.
But what makes it so impressive?
This exoplanet is 3,000 times bigger than its host neutron star!
Furthermore, it was not always a planet; it was once a star.
But first, let's go back to the beginning.
The exoplanet is around 20 kilometers [12 miles] wide and circles an extremely dense
and small neutron star.
On Earth, a teaspoon of this star's stuff would weigh billions of tons.
The star is also a millisecond pulsar, emitting radiation beams every 5.4 milliseconds while
rotating.
This equates to about 10,000 rotations every minute!
The star is not alone; it has a companion planet around 40% the size of Jupiter - PSR
J1719-1438b.
At the same time, this exotic exoplanet is larger than Jupiter.
So, how does it manage to be both small and massive?
This is due to the fact that the exoplanet was originally a star whose outer layers were
torn away by a much larger neighboring pulsar.
This resulted in the carbon remains of a star becoming a diamond world roughly 5 times the
size of our planet.
It presently has a diameter of around 60,000 kilometers.
Because the exoplanet is so near to the pulsar, the entire system may fit within the diameter
of our Sun.
In 2018, a dwarf galaxy known as Bedin-1 was discovered in our Milky Way's intergalactic
backyard, about 30 million light years distant.
As a point of comparison, the entire observable universe is 93 billion light years across,
so you can see how near this is to us.
Because of its tiny size, low Luminosity, absence of dust, and elderly Stellar populations,
Bedin-1 is classified as a dwarf spheroidal Galaxy.
However, this newly discovered Galaxy is unique in so many ways!
To begin with, it is tiny, measuring just 3 000 light years from side to side.
To put this in perspective, consider that the Milky Way's famed spiral disc has a diameter
of 100 000 light years.
Furthermore, Bedin-1 is around 2 million light years from any other giant galaxy, making
it the most isolated dwarf galaxy ever discovered by man.
Loneliness isn't necessarily a bad thing in the universe; it means that the dwarf Galaxy
hasn't had any interactions with other galaxies, however the most important fact is that Bedin-1
is estimated to be as old as the universe itself, roughly 13 billion years old, and
due to this isolation Bedin-1 is the equivalent of a living fossil from the dawn of time.
Only time will tell how many secrets this old galaxy keeps from us.
When it comes to unsolved deep space mysteries, one thing is certain: there are still many
outstanding things and objects to uncover.
The global EMU project, centered in Australia, comprises a team of over 300 scientists from
21 nations.
This team of experts is tasked with surveying the whole Southern sky as far north as 30
degrees.
The ASCAP telescope, which can survey wide swaths of the sky fast and look where no other
telescopes have looked before, will be used by EMU to generate a better resolution radio
map of objects in the southern sky.
But assume for a second that you're one of the scientists utilizing this telescope and
you happen to notice something so unusual that you end up calling it "object WTF".
This is exactly what happened in September 2019 to radio astronomer Anna Kapinska.
She saw a strange form that seemed like a ghostly circle of radio emission hanging out
in space like a Cosmic smoke ring while reading through observations conducted by the EMU
project utilizing the revolutionary new ASCAP telescope.
A few days later, another EMU team member, Emil Lenc, discovered a second ring that was
even creepier than the first, and despite ruling out all apparent explanations for these
bizarre objects in their newest investigation, the EMU team is still striving to figure out
where they originated from.
The EMU astronomy team anticipated from the start that exploring the unknown would lead
to surprising discoveries.
They didn't expect to observe an abnormality like the strange ORCs so early, and the discovery
took the researchers by surprise.
Although our scientists have a good knowledge of how our universe works, they have barely
scratched the surface.
To put it in context, astronomers focused the Hubble Space Telescope at a black speck
of sky so minuscule it could be covered by Abraham Lincoln's eye on a dime held at arm's
length some years ago.
With that little patch of black sky, scientists identified three thousand points of light,
each Galaxy containing an average of 100 billion stars.
Only four of these ORCs have been discovered in all of space.
They have no idea what they are, how far away they are, or how they came to be.
The scientists first believed the finding was caused by a software glitch, but they
were quickly verified to be genuine after independent confirmation was supplied using
the Australia telescope compact array and the Merkerson wide field array.
So far, scientists have only been able to rule out possible explanations for the mysterious
Circle!
They can be observed in the radio spectrum; but, when other types of telescopes were aimed
at them, the unusual radio circles were not visible at all.
None of the ORCs had any evident optical, infrared, or x-ray analogues, making life
tough for those investigating them.
ORCs 1–3 were detected by visual assessment of EMU survey photos, whereas ORC-4 was located
in archive data obtained with the giant meter wave telescope in March 2013.
This indicates that, prior to the ASCAP telescope, astronomers might have been looking at these
objects for years without ever spotting them due to inadequate instruments.
The most difficult challenge that astronomers face when it comes to ORCs is that circular
features irregular occurrences in radio astronomy.
They often depict a spherical object like a supernova remnant, a planetary nebula, or
a star-forming galaxy.
They may also result from image artefacts produced by calibration issues near bright
sources.
ORCs, on the other hand, do not appear to match to any of these recognized types of
objects or artefacts; in fact, the four ORCs are extremely similar in nature.
They all have a strong circular symmetry and a diameter of around one arc minute, or 1
60th of a degree.
Despite their similarities, they differ sufficiently to confound astronomers.
Two of them have a Galaxy around the center of their visible-spectrum radio emissions,
but the other two do not.
Furthermore, three of them appear to be a party-filled ring, whilst ORC-3 appears to
be a uniform disc.
Another perplexing feature is that they are so close together, hinting that these two
ORCs have a similar origin.
This is not the case for ORCs one and four, suggesting that they are two distinct occurrences.
When confronted with such problems, the scientific process is to gradually and painstakingly
reject alternatives until scientists may claim to have discovered something really unique.
That is exactly what the EMU team recently achieved, and their findings were presented
in a research article for the Astronomical Society of Australia in November 2020.
Here's what they discovered: the first thing they ruled out was the ORC being a supernova
Remnant or SRN.
SRNs are structures formed by the supernova explosion of a star.
The Remnant is surrounded by a growing shock wave and is made up of ejected material from
the explosion.
The scientists that studied the ORCs discovered that the possibility of one of them being
a supernova remnant is merely 0.055 percent, while the probability of the other three being
SRN is 2.1 times 10 to the power of negative 5%.
As a result, it's doubtful that the ORCs are supernova remnants.
The second alternative was that these strange radio circles were Galactic planetary nebulae,
which may likewise appear as dispersed discs of radio emissions like ORCs.
They originate near the twilight of the life of a star with an intermediate mass ranging
from 1 to 8 solar masses.
In fact, near the completion of its life cycle, our sun will similarly generate a planetary
nebula.
However, because PNE radio emission is caused by thermal emissions, it is projected to have
a significantly higher spectral index than those found for the four odd radio circles.
Simply said, the proportional connection between the amount of power emitted via a given area
and the frequency of the radiation is substantially lower in the case of an ORC, barring them
from being categorized as PNEs.
Other alternatives, such as the ORCs being part of a star-forming galaxy or a ring Galaxy
viewed from the front, were also ruled out by the EMU team.
All of these galaxies are luminous and have optical wavelengths, in contrast to the ORC's
absence of measurable optical emission.
For the same reason, they cannot be regarded a component of a double lobed radio Galaxy
or a bent tail radio Galaxy.
The circles might also be an Einstein ring, which is a gravitational lensing of background
sources that produces emission arcs.
When a source, lens, and observer are all aligned, the lensed image can take the shape
of an Einstein ring.
However, in the case of ORCs, such a lens is unlikely to be sufficiently symmetric and
completely aligned with the background source to create the observed circular symmetry in
an Einstein ring.
They've also ruled out the possibility that these ORCs are other astronomical phenomena
like gravitational termination shocks or cluster Halo.
Both of which are detected when a neutron star goes supernova.
The majority of astronomical study is focused at improving our understanding of the cosmos
or testing hypotheses.
Rarely do astronomers face the difficulty of discovering a new sort of object that no
one has ever seen before and trying to figure out what it is.
The story behind these new spooky circles continues!
Astronomers must constantly ask themselves if these ORCs are a completely new phenomena
or something they already know about but have been examined in an unusual way.
And, if it is truly unique, how does it alter our knowledge of the universe?
So, what do you think?
Let us know in the comments.