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> Unlike traditional pulsars, which are produced by neutron stars and spit out radio signals every few seconds or milliseconds, LPTs emit pulses at intervals of minutes or hours apart — a period previously thought to be impossible.

Pulsar's pulse comes from their spin contorting the magnetic field lines. When they slow down, they lose energy, and at some point they don't have enough to create XRays.

m463 · 3h ago

I wonder if they could figure out if there were two periods, a horizontal and vertical one.

arthurcolle · 6h ago

Probably a magnetar. The scales of these things make me feel a deep sense of existential dread

surgical_fire · 1h ago

> scales of these things make me feel a deep sense of existential dread

Perhaps ironically, what instills in me this sense of existential dread are supervoids, more than any massively destructive structure.

I can't really explain why, but something about the idea of a incomprehensibly vast nothingness really rubs me in the wrong way.

libraryofbabel · 5h ago

magnetars have got nothing on quasars, an entire galactic core with a 10 billion solar mass black hole in the middle pounding out radiation. (I'd say you'd have a whelk's chance in a supernova in one of them, but they're bigger than a supernova.)

lgas · 5h ago

Out of curiosity, do you have any insight into why the existence of something large would make you feel dread?

elorant · 5h ago

Probably because a magnetar could sterilize everything in a radius of dozens of light years if it has hiccup.

geor9e · 2h ago

idk but theres a whole subreddit dedicated to it https://www.reddit.com/r/megalophobia/

chasd00 · 5h ago

aren't pulsars and magnetars very small when talking about stars and planets? Google's AI says about 20km in diameter but would need to double check that. On the other hand, IIRC the energy output of a pulsar compared to its physical size is pretty scary. You wouldn't want one in your neighborhood.

rkagerer · 4h ago

Yes. Here are fact checks for those who don't trust the easy AI answer:

https://www.britannica.com/science/pulsar

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar#Description

They are both forms of neutron stars, which average around 20km but are the densest objects known to man. Fun fact, one sugar cube of their material would weigh about as much as a mountain (https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/neutron_stars1...).

jiggawatts · 2h ago

All ordinary "room temperature and pressure" matter that we're used to -- that we're made of -- can be thought of as bathtub foam compared to a neutron star stuff that is more like a tungsten brick in that analogy.

Well, not quite, because that analogy misses ten orders of magnitude of density difference. That just hurts my brain.

Magnetars are a whole other level of eldritch madness. The energy density of their magnetic fields is ten thousand times the density of lead.

Let that sink in for a minute.

The vacuum around a magnetar contains so much energy in the magnetic field alone that thanks to the E=mc² conversion ratio between energy and mass it has a "mass density" that is the direct equivalent to every single atomic bomb on the planet blowing up all at once and the released energy of all of that getting packed into a cubic centimeter.

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giantg2 · 6h ago

Eh, let it happen.

NewJazz · 6h ago

Have you read Death's End? Stop dreading and start living.

wkat4242 · 5h ago

That is very very slow for a pulsar. I guess it's possible but it would be weird. Pulsars are usually in the range of milliseconds to seconds.

boznz · 3h ago

Its obviously a Slow Rotational Pulsar (SRP) - I get naming rights as I invented it :-)

janalsncm · 1h ago

> ASKAP J1832-0911

At this level of entropy I wonder if they’re not better off using uuids instead.

mithrene · 15m ago

The name isn't random! It's common in astronomy to encode the targets position in the name in sexagesimal units. It's useful because you can read the name and immediately know where it is on the sky.

In this case, J1832-0911 means a right ascension of 18h(hours) 32m(minutes) and a declination of -9°(degrees)11'(arcminutes). Using this, you could quickly work out whether it's visible from your location.

bradhe · 6h ago

Please let it be the end.

xqcgrek2 · 5h ago

Not aliens sending signals, but some kind of interstellar industrial accident more likely.

malux85 · 6h ago

This type of emission is not directed, right? Which means it's not firing "at" anything, it's just emitting in all directions.

ianburrell · 6h ago

Pulsars shoot beams out of their magnetic poles so they are directed but in a beam. Even the narrowest would be lots of stars. They are also spinning so they sweep a larger area.

somat · 4h ago

My natural first question is. If it is coming out of the pole, why is it sweeping?

My guess, nothing is perfect, the rotation pole does not align exactly with the magnetic pole.

A second followup question, do stars tend to be coaxially aligned with their galaxy? it it possible to tell which way a star or pulsar is rotating?

dumah · 2h ago

This is called the pulsar’s magnetic inclination and it’s often quite far from 0, all the way to nearly orthogonal.

Yes but this is a dynamic process that produces more correlated stars as the galaxy ages.

Astronomers routinely measure such parameters using models to provide confidence bounds for their estimates.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.13857

AnimalMuppet · 6h ago

This type of emission may be directed (or at least, emitted by something rotating, so directed at different locations around a circle as it rotates). That would leave it firing at Earth some of the time, and firing other places at other times.

Or, it could be something that flares up every 44 minutes, and is emitted in all directions at once. We really don't know.

pkdpic · 6h ago

That's a good point, I didn't catch any explanation for that choice of wording. Wonder if it was intentional.

randomname4325 · 6h ago

aliens?

ataru · 6h ago

Any self respecting alien would send the signal every 42 minutes.

unsnap_biceps · 6h ago

It says the burst lasts 2 minutes, so it would be 42 minutes of silence followed by 2 minutes of signal for a 44 minute cycle.

sieste · 6h ago

Has anyone checked the local planning office on alpha centauri for vogon announcements recently?

thrill · 6h ago

After I get my towel.

NewJazz · 6h ago

See ya soon and please be ready with the fish!

hkt · 6h ago

Maybe there's more redshift than they intended!

lostmsu · 6h ago

Many aliens would have to have computed the Answer independently as the news from Douglas haven't reached them yet.

fuzztester · 5h ago

you've got to think deeper.

the concept of self respect itself may be alien to "aliens".

it's a human construct / concept.

also, stop calling them aliens. it is disrespectful.

(otherwise they might zap us with their thought cannon, compared to which light sabers are like toothpicks.)

they have as much right to be in this universe as we have. the term "alien" is a human and sci-fi construct. and sci-fi is, well, fi(ction).

call them extra terrestrial beings, or just other beings.

we need to realise that other beings can have other sets of values than we do, or even none. heck, they may not even have the concept of values. and there is nothing wrong with that.

i can go on, but I'll stop here. my other being friends are calling me for a get together.

100721 · 5h ago

I mean, there are humans without values. We don’t have to go far.

fuzztester · 3h ago

if you mean hitler, he was an alien.

braiamp · 6h ago

Most likely, a very far away pulsar.

delichon · 5h ago

Pointed at Earth by aliens.