A globe that looks like an alien world has been picked up by Australia’s ASKAP telescope which has “remarkable circular symmetry” and defies current space theories
A “perfect” sphere with “low surface brightness” picked up by a radio telescope defies Space theories and has left scientists baffled.
The floating globe that looks like an alien world was picked up by Australia ’s ASKAP telescope hiding in our Milky Way trillions of miles away and is thought to be expanding. Invisible to the naked eye, what is really surprising is its shape. Scientists have named it Teleios, from the ancient Greek word for ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’ due to its “remarkable circular symmetry” and they are so far at a loss to how it came to exist as it doesn’t follow our current understanding of Space.
The current size of Teleios is as big as possibly 157 light-years in diameter and can be made out in fuzzy blue and green images. What is also strange about the sphere is that it can only be seen in radio waves – the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum.
It means that scientists can’t see it clearly as it can’t be picked up through X-rays or for example infrared light.
“Teleios [is] named from the Greek Τελεɩοσ (‘perfect’) for its near-perfectly circular shape,” says the international team of researchers. “The most obvious characteristic of Teleios is its remarkable circular symmetry, coupled with a low surface brightness.”
The team led by astrophysicist Miroslav Filipovic at Western Sydney University in Australia added: “This unique object has never been seen in any wavelength, including visible light, demonstrating ASKAP’s incredible ability to discover new objects.”
Teleios was spotted by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) which is a series of radio telescopes located in the desert in Western Australia. Although it is in our galaxy it is still thousands of trillions of miles away.
While the scientists don’t know what the sphere is, they do have theories including that it is a Type la supernova remnan’. A supernova occurs when a star explodes and throws debris into space – which also leads to it losing mass.
A Type la supernova is one that doesn’t destroy the white dwarf completely but leaves behind a zombie-like remnant and this would fit in with Teleios’ properties, reported ScienceAlert.
“We have made an exhaustive exploration of the possible evolutionary state of the supernova based on its surface brightness, apparent size and possible distances,” said the scientists in their study.
“All possible scenarios have their challenges, especially considering the lack of X-ray emission that is expected to be detectable given our evolutionary modelling. While we deem the Type Ia scenario the most likely, we note that no direct evidence is available to definitively confirm any scenario and new sensitive and high-resolution observations of this object are needed.”