Astronomers have uncovered fresh facts about one of the universe’s oddest structures. Odd enough to be called “Radio Circles” (ORC).
.
These enormous occurrences are unexplained and may have a million light-year diameters.
Five ORCs have been found, with six more potential. Scientists can’t describe these unfathomable monsters to humans.
A March 20 report gives new light on the first phenomenon. The South African MeerKAT radio telescope caught the amazing photos of ORC1 (ORC J2103-6200). Never before has an ORC been this detailed. Alice Pasetto, a radio astronomer at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, told Nature that “this discovery will start new scientific research among astronomers.”
MysteriousAccording to radio astronomer Bärbel Koribalski of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Sydney, it resembles a Fabergé egg or a soap bubble. The outer circle measures more than a million light-years in diameter, ten times the Milky Way’s diameter.
ORCs are new astronomical objects. Astronomer Anna Kapinska identified them three years ago using Australian radio telescopes. Initially, scientists thought they were instrument calibration problems. We know they’re real, but we don’t know how they were made. Edge-brightening circles are a mystery. We know they can only be viewed in the radio spectrum and that three out of five have a core that corresponds with a visible galaxy.
The Universe Calls
This new study offers three explanations. First, it’s the leftovers of an impossibly massive explosion in galaxy centers. We can only hypothesize about the cause of this explosion, which may be the merger of two supermassive black holes.
The second hypothesis is a shock wave from the creation of millions of stars, and the third is jets that shoot out very energetic particles in galaxies.
ORCs are rings of feeble emissions that surround a galaxy with a very active black hole at its center, but astronomers can’t explain why they’re so rare.
Study’s ORC1 readings It’s amazing that we only discovered these weird buildings three years ago. Astronomers believe they created about a billion years ago, but the fact that we’re continuously discovering things shows how much we still have to learn.
Socrates was right: we know nothing. The universe’s mysteries keep surfacing. In the coming years, research must focus on the cosmos and the origin of humans.
The big adventure drives our thirst for exploration, our species’ life, and our civilisation. Without it, we’re doomed.