Somewhere deep in our galaxy, an astronomical object is sending out messages every forty-four minutes like clockwork. The signals aren’t random noise from space – they’re precise, powerful, and unlike anything scientists have ever encountered before.
Astronomers have detected an astonishing celestial object emitting bright flashes of radio waves and X-rays that last for two minutes and repeat every 44 minutes. But this discovery represents far more than just another cosmic oddity. It’s forcing researchers to question fundamental assumptions about how the universe works.
The Discovery That Broke All the Rules
The cosmic mystery began in 2023 when astronomers using Australia’s ASKAP radio telescope spotted something extraordinary. The object, known as ASKAP J1832-0911, emits pulses of radio waves and X-rays for two minutes every 44 minutes. ASKAP J1832-0911 is located in our Milky Way galaxy about 15,000 light-years from Earth. What made this find so shocking wasn’t just the regularity of the signals, but the fact that nothing like it should exist according to our current understanding of physics.
For context, imagine a lighthouse that flashes every few seconds versus one that only lights up for a few minutes every hour. This, say astronomers, is thousands of times longer than the length of the variations seen in pulsars, which are spinning neutron stars that act like celestial lighthouses, emitting a regular pulse as they rotate. It was like finding a cosmic metronome operating at an impossibly slow tempo.
X-Rays From the Unknown
Scientists had discovered similar mysterious radio sources before, but ASKAP J1832-0911 delivered another surprise. This is the first time objects like these, called long-period transients (LPTs), have been detected in X-rays. The simultaneous discovery in both radio and X-ray wavelengths was pure chance – NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory happened to be pointing at the same patch of sky.
“Discovering that ASKAP J1832-0911 was emitting X-rays felt like finding a needle in a haystack,” Wang said. “The ASKAP radio telescope has a wide field view of the night sky, while Chandra observes only a fraction of it. So, it was fortunate that Chandra observed the same area of the night sky at the same time.”
The Gravitational Wave Mystery From Another Universe
Meanwhile, in a completely separate corner of the cosmos, another signal has scientists even more baffled. In 2019, scientists detected a gravitational wave signal that perplexed researchers around the globe. This signal, identified as GW190521, diverged from the typical patterns observed in black hole collisions, leading to intriguing theories about its origins. Unlike typical gravitational waves that produce long, rising chirps as black holes spiral toward each other, this one was different.
What made this signal unusual was its duration: less than a tenth of a second – far shorter than the long, continuous signals typically produced by merging black holes. A team of Chinese scientists led by Dr. Qi Lai has proposed something that sounds like science fiction: The most captivating hypothesis suggests that this signal may have traveled through a wormhole from a parallel universe.
When Physics Meets Science Fiction
The wormhole theory isn’t just wild speculation. In this work, we hypothesize that GW190521 might represent a single, isolated gravitational wave (GW) echo pulse from the wormhole, which is the postmerger remnant of BBHs in another universe and connected to our universe through a throat. The ringdown signal after BBHs merged in another universe can pass through the throat of wormhole and be detected in our universe as a short-duration echo pulse.
Think of it like hearing the echo of an explosion in a distant valley – except in this case, the “valley” might be an entirely different universe. The concept is fascinating: if the collision of two black holes were powerful enough, it might create a tunnel between universes. The gravitational signal could then travel through this “throat” and reach our cosmos. Since the wormhole would remain open only for a brief moment, this would explain why GW190521 appears to end so abruptly.
The Numbers Don’t Add Up
What makes GW190521 so puzzling is what it’s missing. GW190521 lacked the inspiral part of the signal, and at the derived mass of the merger – 142 times the mass of the Sun – it should have been detectable. This led to the conclusion that the black holes were not locked in a binary orbit, but were simply passing each other by when they were slurped into a mutual gravity well and merged.
The conventional explanation suggests these were black holes that crashed into each other by chance rather than slowly spiraling together. But even that doesn’t fully satisfy scientists. The binary black hole merger waveform was a slightly better fit for the observed signal than the wormhole waveform – but only slightly. There’s enough room for doubt, the researchers say, that the wormhole scenario is still possible.
Fast Radio Bursts From Deep Time
Adding to the cosmic puzzle are mysterious signals called fast radio bursts (FRBs), some of which are arriving from unimaginably distant places in the universe. Scientists have revealed the age and point of origin of a radio signal that was detected in March 2024. The fast radio burst came from a point in the universe that existed when the universe was young. Scientists say that this FRB travelled billions of years to reach us, way before our Sun and Earth were born.
These signals represent messages from the early universe itself, carrying information about cosmic conditions that existed when the universe was just a child. Researchers said that the radio burst originated from a dwarf galaxy undergoing a strong burst of star formation. This was found to be a dwarf galaxy where young stars were being constantly born. It’s like receiving a postcard mailed from the dawn of time.
The Wow Signal’s New Explanation
Perhaps the most famous mysterious signal from space got a new explanation in 2024. Scientists studying the famous ‘Wow! signal’ think they’ve finally pinpointed a possible origin for the baffling radio transmission detected in 1977. The signal, discovered by astronomer Jerry Ehman, was so unusual he literally wrote “Wow!” on the printout next to it.
Recent research published by the Planetary Habitability Laboratory reported observations made in 2020 at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico – where they conclude that the Wow! signal was likely caused by a rare astrophysical event, in which stellar emissions energizing a cold hydrogen cloud caused it to suddenly surge in brightness. This explanation suggests the signal wasn’t from aliens, but from a natural cosmic event so rare we’d never seen it before.
Long-Period Transients Challenge Everything
LPTs, which emit radio pulses that occur minutes or hours apart, are a relatively recent discovery. Since their first detection by ICRAR researchers in 2022, several LPTs have been discovered by astronomers across the world. Currently, there is no clear explanation for what causes these signals, or why they ‘switch on’ and ‘switch off’ at such long, regular and unusual intervals.
The challenge these objects present goes beyond simple classification problems. “This object is unlike anything we have seen before,” Dr. Wang said. “ASKAP J1831-0911 could be a magnetar (the core of a dead star with powerful magnetic fields), or it could be a pair of stars in a binary system where one of the two is a highly magnetized white dwarf (a low-mass star at the end of its evolution).” However, even those theories do not fully explain what we are observing. This discovery could indicate a new type of physics or new models of stellar evolution.”
What These Signals Are Telling Us
The simultaneous detection of radio waves and X-rays from ASKAP J1832-0911 provides crucial clues about what might power these mysterious objects. “X-rays usually come from extremely hot and energetic environments, so their presence suggests that something dramatic happened to the object,” said Wang, lead author of a study reporting the observations, which was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The long-period transients appear to be more energetic than previously believed if they can produce X-rays, which have more energy than radio waves, Wang said.
Think of X-rays as the universe’s way of screaming – they only appear when extremely violent processes are occurring. The fact that ASKAP J1832-0911 produces both gentle radio waves and energetic X-rays suggests whatever’s happening there involves physics at the very edge of our understanding.
The Cosmic Implications
These discoveries collectively suggest that our universe might be far stranger and more connected than we ever imagined. Should the wormhole hypothesis for GW190521 be validated, it would suggest that our universe is part of a multiverse – a collection of potentially infinite universes with varying laws of physics. This concept, while speculative, is supported by certain interpretations of quantum mechanics and cosmology.
If these signals are indeed evidence of connections to other universes or exotic physics we don’t understand, it would represent the biggest paradigm shift in science since Einstein’s relativity. We might not be living in an isolated cosmic bubble but in an interconnected web of realities.
Future Hunting for Cosmic Mysteries
Scientists aren’t just sitting back and wondering about these signals – they’re actively hunting for more. The hope is the discovery that at least one LPT emits X-rays in the same way it does radio waves could help shed light on the mysterious origins of these objects. That’s because the fact that X-rays are so much more energetic than radio waves are means whatever the object behind ASKAP J1832- 0911 is, it must be able to produce both types of radiation. That should narrow down the field of suspects – and, there should be more LPTs out there acting just like this one, the study team reasons.
The discovery of one mysterious signal often leads to finding others. “Finding one such object hints at the existence of many more,” Nanda Rea, study team member and a researcher at the Institute of Space Science (ICE-CSIC) and Catalan Institute for Space studies (IEEC), said in the statement. “The discovery of its transient X-ray emission opens fresh insights into their mysterious nature.”
Conclusion: Reality Check
These cosmic signals are forcing scientists to confront the possibility that reality is far more complex and mysterious than our current theories suggest. Whether we’re dealing with exotic stellar objects pushing the boundaries of known physics, echoes from parallel universes, or something else entirely, these discoveries represent profound challenges to our understanding of the cosmos.
The universe seems to be full of phenomena that our best theories can’t fully explain. Each mysterious signal detected brings us face-to-face with the humbling realization that we’re still cosmic newcomers trying to understand forces and structures that dwarf our imagination. These signals might be the universe’s way of reminding us that we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of cosmic reality.
What other secrets might be hidden in the cosmic static, waiting to challenge everything we think we know about existence itself?
Jan loves Wildlife and Animals and is one of the founders of Animals Around The Globe. He holds an MSc in Finance & Economics and is a passionate PADI Open Water Diver. His favorite animals are Mountain Gorillas, Tigers, and Great White Sharks. He lived in South Africa, Germany, the USA, Ireland, Italy, China, and Australia. Before AATG, Jan worked for Google, Axel Springer, BMW and others.
