Posted on 07/08/2020 3:37:51 PM PDT by BenLurkin
There's something unusual lurking out in the depths of space: Astronomers have discovered four faint objects that at radio wavelengths are highly circular and brighter along their edges. And they're unlike any class of astronomical object ever seen before.
The objects, which look like distant ring-shaped islands, have been dubbed odd radio circles, or ORCs, for their shape and overall peculiarity. Astronomers don't yet know exactly how far away these ORCs are, but they could be linked to distant galaxies. All objects were found away from the Milky Way's galactic plane and are around 1 arcminute across (for comparison, the moon's diameter is 31 arcminutes).
After ruling out objects like supernovas, star-forming galaxies, planetary nebulas and gravitational lensing — a magnifying effect due to the bending of space-time by nearby massive objects — among other things, the astronomers speculate that the objects could be shockwaves leftover from some extragalactic event or possibly activity from a radio galaxy.
With only four of these peculiar objects discovered so far, the astronomers can't yet tease out the true nature of these structures. But the EMU survey is just beginning, and astronomers expect it to reveal more unusual objects.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
“I’ll send you a picture of both and you can decide for yourself.”
LOL!
Weren’t those the dying words of Werner Von Braun?
Great book!
Knew it when you said Larry Niven. Read it in ‘79.
Really enjoyed that series of books.
For some odd reason, that thought blipped into my brain also.
My first thought upon reading the title was “they’re coming for us.”
It’s one of the usual suspects.
Autons, Cybermen, Daleks, Orgons, or Zygons most likely.
What happened to the bygons? They don’t matter anymore.
Nope, time stands still for an object moving at the speed of light...
I forgot to mention, these objects are HUGE. If they’re visible and outside of the Milky Way, that means they are very far away (Milky Way has a radius of 50-60M light-years), so tens of thousands, if not hundreds/thousands, of light-years away (we’re on the edge, and I don’t know if these sightings are near side or across the galaxy)
For measurements, Diameter = distance x arcmin / 3438.
So these four(!) objects, at 300M light-years away, are the same size as our entire galaxy. But, considering we can already ‘see’ other galaxies, none of which are that close, seems to imply these are so far away that we can’t get a better resolution on what they are. So our size formula means they have to be what, 10MM light-years big? Bigger?
I feel so violated.
Maybe he wrote it. Its from wikipedia. Radio galaxies.
C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate?
Are you an astrophysicist or did you copy and past from wiki?
...release the UFOs...
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They’re gonna need a bigger cast of crisis actors for that one.
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