Space exploration has provided us with a plethora of information, which has enabled us to create innovations and technology that have simplified human existence while also enabling us to discover more and explore further into the universe. What has the NASA telescope unearthed recently that defies all logic? WASP-76b is one of several extrasolar planets in the universe. It is a hot exoplanet situated approximately 640 light-years away. However, the planet is also infamous for its eternal darkness and iron-molten rains. It was discovered in 2016, and its size is comparable to that of Jupiter. Since the planet is tidally locked to a star, it always faces it. The temperature reaches 2,350 degrees Celsius during the day (4,300 degrees Fahrenheit). This is more than sufficient to evaporate metals into the atmosphere, such as iron.
In addition, the radiation received by the dayside is millions of times more than what our world receives from the Sun. The dark side of WASP-76b is roughly twice as cold as the light side. This exoplanet endures violent winds as a result of its large temperature difference. Therefore, the wind transfers iron vapor from the warmer to the cooler side of the planet. As the vapor cools, molten iron rains down upon the surface of the planet. That is odd, although not as odd as the planet designated PSR J1719-1438b. But why is it so remarkable? This exoplanet is three thousand times larger than its neutron star home! In addition, it was not always a planet; it was a star in the past. However, let’s start from the beginning. The exoplanet has a diameter of approximately 20 kilometers (12 miles) and orbits a small, dense neutron star. A teaspoon of this star’s material would weigh billions of tons on Earth. In addition to being a millisecond pulsar, the star emits radiation beams every 5.4 milliseconds as it rotates. This corresponds to around 10,000 revolutions every minute! The star has a companion planet, PSR J1719-1438b, that is roughly 40% the size of Jupiter. Moreover, this strange extrasolar planet is larger than Jupiter.
How then can it manage to be both tiny and enormous? This is because the exoplanet was originally a star whose outer layers were stripped away by a much larger pulsar in the neighborhood. This resulted in the creation of a diamond planet approximately five times the size of our own. Currently, its diameter is approximately 60,000 kilometers. Due to the proximity of the exoplanet to the pulsar, the complete system may fit within the Sun’s diameter. Bedin-1 was discovered in 2018 in the intergalactic backyard of our Milky Way, approximately 30 million light years away. Comparatively, the observable universe is 93 billion light years vast, so you can see how close this object is to us. Bedin-1 is categorized as a dwarf spheroidal galaxy due to its diminutive size, low luminosity, absence of dust, and aging stellar populations. Nonetheless, this recently discovered galaxy is exceptional in numerous respects! Initially, it is little, measuring only 3,000 light years from side to side. Consider that the Milky Way’s famous spiral disc has a diameter of 100,000 light years to put this into context. In addition, Bedin-1 is around 2 million light-years away from any other massive galaxy, making it the most isolated dwarf galaxy yet discovered by humans. Loneliness is not necessarily a bad thing in the universe; it indicates 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, approximately 13 billion years old, and due to its isolation, Bedin-1 is the equivalent of a living fossil from the beginning of time. Time will reveal how many secrets this ancient galaxy conceals from us. Regarding unsolved deep space mysteries, one thing is certain: there are still a great deal of remarkable things and items to discover. The international EMU project, headquartered in Australia, is comprised of around 300 scientists from 21 countries. This squad is entrusted with surveying the entire southern sky up to 30 degrees north. EMU will employ the ASCAP telescope, which can rapidly survey large portions of the sky and see where no other telescope has seen previously, to produce a higher-resolution radio map of objects in the southern sky. But suppose for a moment that you are one of the scientists using this telescope and you observe something so strange that you end up dubbing it “object WTF.” This is precisely what happened to radio astronomer Anna Kapinska in September of 2019. While looking through observations done by the EMU project using the revolutionary new ASCAP telescope, she observed a peculiar shape that resembled a spectral circle of radio emission suspended in space like a Cosmic smoke ring.
A few days later, another EMU team member, Emil Lenc, discovered a second ring that was much more eerie than the first. Despite ruling out all possible explanations for these strange objects in their most recent inquiry, the EMU team is still attempting to determine where they came from. The EMU astronomy team anticipated from the beginning that exploration of the unknown would result in unexpected discoveries. Researchers were taken aback by the discovery of the odd ORCs, which they had not anticipated observing so soon. Although modern scientists have an extensive understanding of how the universe functions, they have barely scratched the surface. Several years ago, astronomers trained the Hubble Space Telescope on a tiny black speck of sky so small that it could have been covered by Abraham Lincoln’s eye on a cent held at arm’s length. Scientists found three thousand points of light, each galaxy holding an average of 100 billion stars, using this small piece of black sky. In all of universe, just four of these ORCs have been detected. Nobody knows what they are, how far away they are, or how they came to exist. The scientists initially suspected that the discovery was the result of a software error, but it was quickly shown to be authentic by independent confirmation using the Australia telescope compact array and the Merkerson wide field array.
Scientists have only been able to rule out probable explanations for the Circle so far. They can be spotted in the radio spectrum, but when viewed via other types of telescopes, the peculiar radio circles were not visible at all. There were no obvious optical, infrared, or x-ray equivalents for the ORCs, making life difficult for those examining them. ORCs 1–3 were discovered by visual inspection of EMU survey photographs, while ORC-4 was spotted in March 2013 using archive data from the huge meter wave telescope. This implies that prior to the ASCAP telescope, astronomers may have viewed these objects for years without noticing them because to insufficient equipment. The most challenging aspect of ORCs for astronomers is the irregular appearance of circular features in radio astronomy. They frequently portray spherical objects such as a supernova remnant, a planetary nebula, or a galaxy in the process of producing stars. They may also be caused by image artifacts resulting from calibration problems near bright sources. ORCs, on the other hand, do not appear to correspond to any of these known sorts of objects or artifacts; in fact, the nature of the four ORCs is remarkably similar. All of them exhibit strong circular symmetry and a diameter of around one arc minute, or one sixty-millionth of a degree. In spite of their similarities, their differences are significant enough to confuse astronomers.
Two of them have visible-spectrum radio emissions emanating from the center of a Galaxy, while 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 puzzling aspect is their proximity, which suggests that these two ORCs share a common origin. This is not the case for ORCs 1 and 4, indicating they are two separate events. When confronted with such issues, the scientific method requires scientists to gradually and meticulously eliminate alternatives until they can claim to have uncovered something truly unique. This is precisely what the EMU team has recently accomplished, and their findings will be published in a research publication for the Australian Astronomical Society in November 2020. Here is what they found: First, they ruled out the possibility that the ORC was a supernova remnant or SRN. SRNs are structures generated by the explosion of a star’s supernova. The Remnant is comprised of ejected debris from the explosion and is encircled by a developing shock wave. The probability that one of the ORCs is a supernova remnant is just 0.055 percent, whereas the probability that the other three are SRN is 2.1 times 10 to the negative five percent power. Consequently, it is unlikely that the ORCs are supernova remnants. The second possibility was that these unusual radio circles were Galactic planetary nebulae, which may also appear as distributed radio emission discs similar to ORCs.
They originate near the end of a star’s life with an intermediate mass between 1 and 8 solar masses. In fact, near the end of its life cycle, our sun will produce a planet-forming nebula. However, because PNE radio emission is created by thermal emissions, it is anticipated that its spectral index will be substantially larger than that of the four odd radio circles. Simply said, the proportional relationship between the amount of power emitted via a given area and the frequency of the radiation is much weaker for ORCs, preventing them from being classified as PNEs. The EMU team ruled out additional possibilities, such as the ORCs being part of a star-forming galaxy or a ring Galaxy viewed from the front. All of these galaxies are bright and emit light at optical wavelengths, in contrast to the absence of detectable optical emission from the ORC. For the same reason, they cannot be deemed a component of a double lobed radio Galaxy or a bent tail radio Galaxy.
The circles might possibly be an Einstein ring, which is a gravitational lensing of background sources that forms 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 achieve the observed circular symmetry in an Einstein ring. They’ve also ruled out the likelihood that these ORCs are other astronomical phenomena like gravitational termination shocks or cluster Halo. Both of which are discovered when a neutron star goes supernova. The majority of astronomical study is directed at improving our understanding of the cosmos or testing concepts. Rarely do astronomers face the task of discovering a new sort of object that no one has ever seen before and trying to figure out what it is. The mystery behind these new scary circles continues! Astronomers must continuously ask themselves if these ORCs are a completely new phenomena or something they already know about but have been explored in a unique way. And, if it is actually unique, how does it modify our knowledge of the universe?
