Latest news with #MiroslavFilipovic
Daily Mirror
24-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Mirror
Scientists stumped by perfect sphere in Space sending out radio signals
A globe that looks like an alien world has been picked up by Australia's ASKAP telescope which has "remarkable circular symmetry" and defies current space theories A "perfect" sphere with 'low surface brightness' picked up by a radio telescope defies Space theories and has left scientists baffled. The floating globe that looks like an alien world was picked up by Australia 's ASKAP telescope hiding in our Milky Way trillions of miles away and is thought to be expanding. Invisible to the naked eye, what is really surprising is its shape. Scientists have named it Teleios, from the ancient Greek word for 'complete' or 'perfect' due to its 'remarkable circular symmetry' and they are so far at a loss to how it came to exist as it doesn't follow our current understanding of Space. The current size of Teleios is as big as possibly 157 light-years in diameter and can be made out in fuzzy blue and green images. What is also strange about the sphere is that it can only be seen in radio waves - the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. It means that scientists can't see it clearly as it can't be picked up through X-rays or for example infrared light. 'Teleios [is] named from the Greek Τελεɩοσ ('perfect') for its near-perfectly circular shape,' says the international team of researchers. 'The most obvious characteristic of Teleios is its remarkable circular symmetry, coupled with a low surface brightness.' The team led by astrophysicist Miroslav Filipovic at Western Sydney University in Australia added: 'This unique object has never been seen in any wavelength, including visible light, demonstrating ASKAP's incredible ability to discover new objects.' Teleios was spotted by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) which is a series of radio telescopes located in the desert in Western Australia. Although it is in our galaxy it is still thousands of trillions of miles away. While the scientists don't know what the sphere is, they do have theories including that it is a Type la supernova remnan'. A supernova occurs when a star explodes and throws debris into space - which also leads to it losing mass. A Type la supernova is one that doesn't destroy the white dwarf completely but leaves behind a zombie-like remnant and this would fit in with Teleios' properties, reported ScienceAlert. "We have made an exhaustive exploration of the possible evolutionary state of the supernova based on its surface brightness, apparent size and possible distances," said the scientists in their study. "All possible scenarios have their challenges, especially considering the lack of X-ray emission that is expected to be detectable given our evolutionary modelling. While we deem the Type Ia scenario the most likely, we note that no direct evidence is available to definitively confirm any scenario and new sensitive and high-resolution observations of this object are needed."
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Baffled by a Suspicious, Perfectly Round Sphere in Our Galaxy
Today, in questions you didn't know you needed the answer to: Is there such a thing as a perfect ball? And if there were, would it contain the secrets of the universe? To wit, a spherical object lurking in our galaxy is so perfectly round that astronomers can't explain how it was formed. Dubbed "Teleios" after the Greek word for "perfect," the object is what's known as a supernova remnant (SNR), a glowing cloud of hot gases and other material left behind after a massive star dies in a powerful explosion called a supernova. And it's definitely earned its nickname. According to the astronomers' findings, as reported in a pre-print study accepted for publication in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, this is one of the most circular galactic SNRs ever found. "The shape indicates Teleios has remained relatively untouched by its environment," said lead author Miroslav Filipovic, an astronomer at Western Sydney University, in an essay for The Conversation written with his colleagues earlier this year. "This presents us with an opportunity to make inferences about the initial supernova explosion, providing rare insight into one of the most energetic events in the universe." When a star goes supernova, it blasts all that stellar material into space in a tremendous release of energy bright enough to momentarily outshine even entire galaxies. The astronomers believe that Teleios is the result of a rare type of explosion — we're talking happening only once every 500 years in the Milky Way rare — called a type Ia supernova that occurs in binary star systems. When a smaller but far denser white dwarf siphons enough matter from its companion star whose orbit has crept too close, the stolen stellar material detonates in an epic thermonuclear explosion that obliterates both the stars. For something so symmetrical to emerge out of an event so violent is unusual, to put it mildly. "The supernova remnant will be deformed by its environment over time. If one side of the explosion slams into an interstellar cloud, we'll see a squashed shape," explained Filipovic in the essay. "So, a near-perfect circle in a messy universe is a special find." Teleios was uncovered as part of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), an enormous radio telescope that's proving to be a powerful tool for finding SNRs that aren't visible in other wavelengths. Teleios, exclusively seen at radio-continuum frequencies, is one of them. Along with its perfect shape, it has one of the lowest surface brightnesses among all known galactic SNRs. The astronomers estimate that Teleios lies at a distance of either 2.2 or 7.7 kiloparsecs away (or approximately 7,100 or 25,100 light years). The uncertainty surrounding its distance means its age and size are hard to pin down, too. It's either on the younger side at less than 1,000 years old, or much older at over 10,000 years old. Likewise, it could be as small as 46 light years across, or as large as 157 light years. In any case, their findings place Teleios at a stage of its evolution called the Sedov-Taylor phase, during which the expansion of the SNR first begins to slow down, as it sweeps up additional mass from the interstellar medium of space. There's a catch, though: this process should produce detectable x-ray emissions, but the astronomers haven't see any. Maybe, the astronomers explored, Teleios is actually the remnant of an even rarer type of Ia supernova: a type Iax, in which the white dwarf partially survives as "zombie star." In that case, Teleios might be much closer at less than 3,200 light years away while being about 10.7 light years across. No hard answer, however, can be made from the data we have now. But this is just the beginning, and the astronomers are optimistic that more detailed observations in the future will one day help put this mystery to bed. More on stars: NASA's James Webb Telescope Just Found Frozen Water Around Another Star
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Images Show Entire "Universe" of Circular Structure That Can Only Be Seen as Radio Signals
The vast realm probed by radio astronomers is one invisible to the naked eye, and even most kinds of telescopes. Now, thanks to the latest advances in radio observatories, scientists are uncovering an entire "low surface brightness universe" teeming with circular curiosities, according to a team of researchers from Australia — including an entirely new class of cosmic object. "It's comprised of radio sources so faint they have never been seen before, each with their own unique physical properties," writes Miroslav Filipovic, an astronomer at Western Sydney University, and his colleagues in an essay for The Conversation. "As we study the sky with telescopes that record radio signals rather than light, we end up seeing a lot of circles." Allowing astronomers to delve into this uncharted realm include the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), which is made up of 36 powerful antennas, and the South African MeerKAT radio telescope, comprising 64 antennas. Both are continuously involved in performing surveys of the night sky, but ASKAP in particular is leading one called the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) launched in 2022, which seeks to account for every radio source imaginable in the Southern sky. In their essay, Filopovic and his colleagues document some of the most interesting objects this new generation of radio telescopes have found so far. Two of them are stellar oddities known as a Wolf-Rayet star. Dubbed Kýklos and WR16, these are massive celestial bodies, perhaps 25 times heavier than the Sun, near the end of their relatively brief lifespans. At this moribund stage, Wolf-Rayets rapidly shed mass, forming extremely luminous shells that, at their source, outshine our Sun by millions of times. That light is extremely faint by the time it reaches our planet, however, and since they only stick around for a few million years, spotting them is rare. "In these objects, a previous outflow of material has cleared the space around the star, allowing the current outburst to expand symmetrically in all directions," wrote the astronomers. "This sphere of stellar detritus shows itself as a circle." Radio imagery has also revealed a number of supernova remnants, or the sphere of gases and other material left behind after a massive star burns through its fuel, collapses under its own gravity, and epically explodes. "The supernova remnant will be deformed by its environment over time. If one side of the explosion slams into an interstellar cloud, we'll see a squashed shape," explained Filipovic and company. "So, a near-perfect circle in a messy universe is a special find." Lo and behold, ASKAP managed to spot one: a remnant named Teleios. And it's so perfect that nothing like it has ever been seen, according to the astronomers. "This presents us with an opportunity to make inferences about the initial supernova explosion, providing rare insight into one of the most energetic events in the universe," the scientists wrote. Most mysterious of all is the latest instance (viewable here, on the right) of a new class of cosmic objects called Odd Radio Circles (ORCs), which, as the name suggests, are a phenomenon exclusively visible to the wavelength. ORCs are unfathomably large — large enough that they often imprison entire galaxies at their centers, with some being ten times as wide as the Milky Way. Tantalizingly, this is just the beginning of our exploration of the "low-surface brightness universe," according to Filopovic, because the ASKAP and MeerKAT are just the prelude to the mother of all telescopes: the Square Kilometer Array, which, once completed, will be the biggest radio observatory in history. More on space: James Webb Spots Mysterious Object Crossing Space Between Stars
