Newly discovered ghostly circles in the sky can't be explained by current theories, astronomers excited

phys.org ^ | 12/02/2020 | Ray Norris

[BenLurkin]

We dubbed them ORCs, which stands for "odd radio circles." But the big question, of course, is: "what are they?"

At first we suspected an imaging artifact, perhaps generated by a software error. But we soon confirmed they are real, using other radio telescopes. We still have no idea how big or far away they are. They could be objects in our galaxy, perhaps a few light-years across, or they could be far away in the Universe and maybe millions of light years across.

When we look in images taken with optical telescopes at the position of ORCs, we see nothing. The rings of radio emission are probably caused by clouds of electrons, but why don't we see anything in visible wavelengths of light? We don't know, but finding a puzzle like this is the dream of every astronomer.

Could they be supernova remnants, the clouds of debris left behind when a star in our galaxy explodes? No. They are far from most of the stars in the Milky Way and there are too many of them.

Could they be the rings of radio emission sometimes seen in galaxies undergoing intense bursts of star formation? Again, no. We don't see any underlying galaxy that would be hosting the star formation.

Could they be the giant lobes of radio emission we see in radio galaxies, caused by jets of electrons squirting out from the environs of a supermassive black hole? Not likely, because the ORCs are very distinctly circular, unlike the tangled clouds we see in radio galaxies.

Could they be Einstein rings, in which radio waves from a distant galaxy are being bent into a circle by the gravitational field of a cluster of galaxies? Still no. ORCs are too symmetrical, and we don't see a cluster at their center.

[BenLurkin]

[SuperLuminal]

Yawn...
Grant renewal time is approaching...
Will have to ask Sabine about this...
Need a "Super-Large Hadron Collider to solve the ring problem... Snicker...

[IronJack]

Be glad they’re orcs and not uruk-hai.

[Bob434]

Nuttin but flying squirrel farts.

[AFB-XYZ]

Priceless! :-)

[Eagles6]

These body piercings are getting out of hand.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

I always preferred the Spike Jones version.

[Daffy]

Try this - Number 1 in 1949
Vaughn Monroe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1JUG2pF6MI
I enjoyed the recording more without the imagery which now accompanies.

[BenLurkin]

Yikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMiLNlFol2U

[griffin]

Wasn’t uranus giving off gas a few days ago?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Beat me to it. Now I got that Sons of the Pioneers or Bob Wills song in my head.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Cirrus Clouds?

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Physics is fun.

Not to me though. Physics sucked. It was HARD.

[caww]

The ghostly ORC1 (blue/green fuzz), on a backdrop of the galaxies at optical wavelengths. There’s an orange galaxy at the centre of the ORC, but we don’t know whether it’s part of the ORC, or just a chance coincidence. Credit: Bärbel Koribalski, based on ASKAP data, with the optical image from the [Dark Energy Survey]

[BenLurkin]

Thanks!

[CardCarryingMember.VastRightWC]

OH COME ON!!!!

You mean to tell me this thread's been up 5 to 6 hours now, and not a single Tolkien "Orc" meme yet?!?!?

Pathetic! Must I do EVERYthing? Sigh. I guess so ..

[FroggyTheGremlim]

Marty Robbins version or Sons of the Pioneers.

I like both.

[PIF]

Cosmic String left over from the big bang