Astronomers in Australia have discovered Odd Radio Circles in space. The researchers working at Western Sydney University have found four objects using images captured by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope. Anna Kapinska, who first made the discovery have nicknamed “WTF“, says that the shapes resemble circular edge-brightened discs. Using two different telescopes, they have discovered four different ones. They have also identified six other discs that may be WTF discs. Among them, labelled by Anna In an essay for The Conversation as WTF? “was a picture of a ghostly circle of radio emission, hanging out in space like a cosmic smoke-ring. None of us had ever seen anything like it before, and we had no idea what it was.”
Ray Norris, a professor of science at the University of West Sydney and the founder of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) project, describes how the ORC was discovered and what is unusual. Scientists do not know how large the discs are or how big they are. They say that the “WTF” discs maybe a few light-years across and in our galaxy, or they may be many light-years across and be in another galaxy. The discs are visible only with radio telescopes, and they believe that radio emissions cause the discs.
Last Updated on 12/05/2020 by Emmanuel Motelin
