User Tools

    To create and edit articles, please register and log-in

Main Menu : categories & index etc.

Main menu
Click categories to expand


A-Z listingplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigA-Z listing

This is an alphabetical index of all content pages.


Other categories

Utilities

Contact
Register
Sandbox

Also see

Importance Ratings
News
Legal
Donate/Sponsor
Curator's rationale
AI Policy



Twitter feed 𝕏



Feeds + s.e.o. etc.
rss / xml feed
sitemap file
A-Z listing (archived)


Indexed under : Physics / Cosmology

Wikenigma - an Encyclopedia of Unknowns Wikenigma - an Encyclopedia of the Unknown

Odd Radio Circles

Researchers using the Australian Square Kilometre Pathfinder telescope - a wide bandwidth radio telescope based 800 km north of Perth, in the Murchison region of Western Australia - have announced (June 2020) the discovery of what they are calling “Odd Radio Circles”, or ORCs.

We have discovered, to the best of our knowledge, a new class of radio-astronomical object, consisting of a circular disc, which in some cases is limb-brightened, and sometimes contains a galaxy at its centre. None of the known types of radio object seems able to explain it. For example, if the ORCs are SNRs, which they strongly resemble, then this implies a population of SNRs in the Galaxy some 50 times larger than the currently accepted figure, or else a new class of SNR which has not previously been reported.
We therefore consider it likely that the ORCs represent a new type of object found in radio- astronomy images. The edge-brightening in some ORCs suggests that this circular image may represent a spherical object, which in turn suggests a spherical wave from some transient event.Several such classes of transient events, capable of producing a spherical shock wave, have recently been discovered, such as fast radio bursts, gamma-ray bursts, and neutron star mergers. However, because of the large angular size of the ORCs, any such transients would have taken place in the distant past.“

See: Unexpected Circular Radio Objects at High Galactic Latitude arXiv, June 2020

It has now been confirmed that ORCs have a supermassive black hole at their centre. Current theories suggest that

[…] they could be debris from a huge explosion in their host galaxies, they could come from jets of material spewed out by supermassive black holes or they could come from residual energy from bursts of star formation.
Sounce : New Scentist March, 2022.

Note: Some researchers have suggested that the circles may be the result of 'Gravitational Lensing' (i.e. large-scale distortions of space-time) caused by a black hole nearby the source object [ref. needed]


    Please share this page to help promote Wikenigma !

Dear reader : Do you have any suggestions for the site's content?

Ideas for new topics, and suggested additions / corrections for older ones, are always welcome.

If you have skills or interests in a particular field, and have suggestions for Wikenigma, get in touch !


Or, if you'd like to become a regular contributor . . . request a login password. Registered users can edit the entire content of the site, and also create new pages.

( The 'Notes for contributors' section in the main menu has further information and guidelines etc.)

Automatic Translation

You are currently viewing an auto-translated version of Wikenigma

Please be aware that no automatic translation engines are 100% accurate, and so the auto-translated content will very probably feature errors and omissions.

Nevertheless, Wikenigma hopes that the translated content will help to attract a wider global audience.

Show another (random) article

Further resources :

DOKUWIKI IMPLEMENTATION DESIGN BY UNIV.ORG.UK DECEMBER 2023