A Mysterious Object in Deep Space Has Blinked Every 22 Minutes for Over 30 Years@TheCosmosNews

#thecosmosnews An intensely magnetic neutron star roughly 15,000 light-years from Earth is stumping astronomers with its ultra-long periods, unleashing radio waves into the cosmos every 22 minutes. Neutron stars with intense magnetic fields are called magnetars. Now, 22-minute periods may sound relatively frequent in Earthly time scales, but most magnetars have periods between a few seconds and a few minutes. The team’s research describing the object was published this week in Nature. “This remarkable object challenges our understanding of neutron stars and magnetars, which are some of the most exotic and extreme objects in the Universe,” said Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astronomer at Curtin University’s International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research and the study’s lead author, in an ICRAR release. Magnetars are responsible for plenty of the fast radio bursts (FRBs) astronomers witness emanating throughout the cosmos, even from within our own galaxy. But long period radio bursts (or ultra-long period bursts, in the parlance of the researchers) are less common. The ultra-long period magnetar is named GPM J1839-10, and was first spotted using the Murchison Widefield Array, a radio telescope array located in remote Western Australia. The magnetar’s bursts last up to five minutes long and have been repeating since at least 1988, according to radio archives searched by the team.