Unveiling the ‘Cosmic Unicorn’: A Spinning Dead Star That Challenges Our Understanding of Physics – A Thrilling Mystery Unfolds!

Astronomers have made an exciting discovery: a rare spinning dead star called CHIME J1634+44, nicknamed the “cosmic unicorn.” This unique object challenges what we know about the universe’s celestial bodies.

CHIME J1634+44 is part of a group known as Long Period Radio Transients (LPTs). Unlike typical pulsars that emit radio waves quickly, LPTs send out bursts that occur over minutes or hours. But CHIME J1634+44 is special. It’s the brightest and most polarized LPT ever found. Its pulses seem to be highly synchronized, making it truly unique among its peers. Notably, it’s the only LPT that appears to be speeding up in rotation.

Team leader Fengqiu Adam Dong, from the Green Bank Observatory, explains, “The bursts repeat every 14 minutes or 841 seconds, but there’s also a longer cycle of 70 minutes. Both patterns are likely real.”

The object was discovered using various telescopes, like the Green Bank Telescope and the Very Large Array. Interestingly, a team from ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, made a simultaneous discovery using their LOFAR radio telescope. Though Dong’s team thinks CHIME J1634+44 is a neutron star, ASTRON’s team believes it might be a white dwarf. Regardless of which it is, both teams agree on its peculiar nature.

Neutron stars and white dwarfs originate from aging stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel. When massive stars, at least eight times the mass of the sun, reach the end of their lives, they collapse into neutron stars. Smaller stars leave behind white dwarfs. As they collapse, their spin often increases due to angular momentum conservation. This can be compared to an ice skater spinning faster when they pull their arms in.

Neutron stars can rotate more than 700 times per second after formation, but they typically slow down as they age. That makes CHIME J1634+44’s increasing spin rate surprising and intriguing.

This increase may be due to its relationship with another star. The study suggests that CHIME J1634+44 might be part of a binary system where it orbits a companion star, which could be another neutron star, a white dwarf, or even a “failed star” called a brown dwarf. This close orbit might cause gravitational waves, which could explain its unique behavior.

Adding to the mystery, CHIME J1634+44 emits 100% circularly polarized radio waves. This means the waves twist as they travel, which has never been observed from neutron stars or white dwarfs before.

Another oddity is how its pulses arrive in pairs only after a gap of spins without bursts. ASTRON astronomer Harish Vedantham noted that the timing of these pairs seems deliberate, hinting at how the companion star might trigger the radiation bursts.

This discovery offers more than just insight into neutron stars. It opens the door to a new understanding of the universe. Researchers believe many more similar objects may exist. The team’s findings were published in *Astronomy & Astrophysics* on July 17, underscoring the importance of this cosmic unicorn in expanding our knowledge of the universe.

As astronomers continue to study CHIME J1634+44, they hope to unravel the secrets of its unique behavior. Understanding such rare objects could reshape what we know about stellar evolution and the cosmic dance of the stars.

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