Scientists have discovered a new type of radio pulse source whose period can be hundreds of minutes. They turned out to be a close pair consisting of a white dwarf and a red dwarf.
Periodic sources of signals
A group of scientists who have been observing the sky in the radio band for the last few years have discovered a new type of periodic radio emission source. Its source was a very unremarkable binary system from the outside.
Astronomers work with radiation sources that operate at different wavelengths. They usually exist all the time, albeit changing in intensity. However, there are also some phenomena that occur only temporarily, only to disappear forever. Finally, there are signals that come to us with a certain periodicity.
The most characteristic example of the latter case is pulsars. These are neutron stars that spin rapidly while absorbing matter from a neighboring luminary. However, their period is measured in seconds. And there are cosmic objects that emit energy with greater periodicity and do not stop doing so for a long time.
Mysterious red dwarfs
An international team of scientists found just such a thing recently. A total of seven new type objects have been found in the last few years. And at first they greatly puzzled the scientists. Because when they started looking at what visible objects the sources corresponded to, they found that they were red dwarfs.
Red dwarfs are amazing stars that often show violent behavior. However, they are too small to be the source of regular flares seen thousands of light years away. Therefore, there must be something else there.
And that “something else” turned out to be a white dwarf. A remnant of a dead luminary that is not massive enough to become a neutron star, but is still capable of pulling some matter from a larger but not massive companion.
Something similar seems to happen in discovered systems. Only white dwarfs are much smaller and dimmer than red dwarfs. Therefore, they can only be discerned by spectroscopy. Thus open systems do not explain all open long-periodic transients. The study authors say there are other signals still waiting to be explained.
According to phys.org
