Mysterious, never seen before ‘odd radio circles’ spotted in space
An unexpected class of astronomical objects has been spotted in the space by a team of researchers, led by astrophysicist Ray Norris of Western Sydney University in Australia. According to the researchers, the objects are unlike anything seen before and were spotted with the help of Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope, out of which three of them have bright rings around the circular object.
Astronomers are calling these unknown objects “odd radio circles,” or ORCs and describing them as glowing balls.
A report by The New York Post suggests that the ORCs were first spotted last year, during a survey of the night sky. They explain that one unknown object can be considered a glitch, but three or more of them may suggest a pattern.
Astronomers involved in the study wrote in a paper, “We have found an unexpected class of astronomical objects which have not previously been reported, in the Evolutionary Map of the Universe Pilot survey, using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope.
The objects appear in radio images as circular edge-brightened discs about one arcmin diameter and do not seem to correspond to any known type of object.”
They further added, “We speculate that they may represent a spherical shock wave from an extra-galactic transient event or the outflow, or a remnant, from a radio galaxy, viewed end-on.”
Astronomers are yet to find out the origin of these four objects and will continue to further study and examine them.
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