>>19123629
>Natasha Hurley-Walker
A radio transient with unusually slow periodic emission (Published January 2022)
Abstract
The high-frequency radio sky is bursting with synchrotron transients from massive stellar explosions and accretion events, but the low-frequency radio sky has, so far, been quiet beyond the Galactic pulsar population and the long-term scintillation of active galactic nuclei. The low-frequency band, however, is sensitive to exotic coherent and polarized radio-emission processes, such as electron-cyclotron maser emission from flaring M dwarfs, stellar magnetospheric plasma interactions with exoplanets and a population of steep-spectrum pulsars, making Galactic-plane searches a prospect for blind-transient discovery. Here we report an analysis of archival low-frequency radio data that reveals a periodic, low-frequency radio transient. We find that the source pulses every 18.18 min, an unusual periodicity that has, to our knowledge, not been observed previously. The emission is highly linearly polarized, bright, persists for 30–60 s on each occurrence and is visible across a broad frequency range. At times, the pulses comprise short-duration (<0.5 s) bursts; at others, a smoother profile is observed. These profiles evolve on timescales of hours. By measuring the dispersion of the radio pulses with respect to frequency, we have localized the source to within our own Galaxy and suggest that it could be an ultra-long-period magnetar. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04272-x
‘Spooky’ object that unleashes periodic bursts of energy detected in Milky Way (From January 2022)
The observation is what’s known as a radio transient, which refers to an object that periodically releases brief flashes of radio signals, as if it’s switching on and off in space.
Astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker was scanning radio signals across huge swaths of the cosmos in late 2020 when she and her colleagues stumbled on something they had never seen before. In a patch of sky that was monitored continuously over 24 hours, the scientists detected the appearance of a mysterious object that unleashed a giant burst of energy every 20 minutes or so and then disappeared several hours later.
"It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there's nothing known in the sky that does that," Hurley-Walker, an astronomer at Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia, said in a statement. The researchers detailed the finding in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The observation is what's known as a radio transient, which refers to an object that periodically releases brief flashes of radio signals, as if it's switching on and off in space.
(Nothing about confirming extra-terrestrial radio transients are from an extraterrestrial technology on her website.)
Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker is an award-winning radio astronomer passionate about understanding the Universe, and bringing the beauty of astronomy to the world. After obtaining her PhD in radio astronomy from the University of Cambridge in 2010, she moved to Australia to help commission the Murchison Widefield Array, a low-frequency precursor to the Square Kilometer Array. Using this telescope, she created a panoramic view of the Universe at low radio frequencies: the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA Survey. From 2020 she has held an ARC Future Fellowship to create GLEAM-X, ten times deeper, opening new possibilities in exploration.
https://www.nhurleywalker.com/
(Nothing about confirming extra-terrestrial radio transients are from an extraterrestrial technology on her employer's website.)
https://www.icrar.org/people/nhw/