Scientists discover truth behind mysterious radio signal in deep space that repeats every two hours
In space nobody can hear you scream, but they can instead hear a radio signal that blares out every two hours with no hesitation. Thankfully scientists have finally uncovered the origins of this mysterious sound, and its source has proven to be incredibly unexpected.
Sounds can be some of the eeriest things you'll find in space, as researchers have released audio of what both the Sun and black holes 'sound' like, and it's hard not to get creeped out.
These noises are even more terrifying if you don't know where they're coming from, as shown in the strange sounds that stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams heard from their own spacecraft.
If there's one thing that has really puzzled scientists though it's the bizarre (and rather creepy) radio signal from space that transmits every two hours without fail, but they've finally discovered its origins.
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As reported by Space, a team of international astronomers have located the source of this mysterious radio signal after a lengthy search, and it was unveiled that it's actually caused by a binary system with a dead star.
These pulses of sound were first discovered by Iris de Ruiter in archives from the largest radio telescope on Earth, known as the Low Frequency Array, or LOFAR for short.
She found that the radio signals date all the way back to 2015, and they can last from anywhere between a few seconds to several minutes, although they remain consistent in their occurrence every two hours with no breaks from the regimented routine.
Strange events have caused a red dwarf and a white dwarf (otherwise known as a dead star) to orbit each other so closely that their magnetic fields interact, and this is what causes the radio blast to sound for us.
Every two hours they bump together endlessly, creating the radio signal that was previously understood to only be capable of neutron stars. However, it's now recognized that binary systems can similarly produce such loud waves of sound, and this changes how astronomers view radio signals.
As per EurekAlert!, Charles Kilpatrick, who co-authored the study, explains that "some astrophysicists also have argued that sources might emit pulses at regular time intervals because they are spinning, so we only see the radio emission when source is rotated towards us.
"Now, we know at least some long-period radio transients come from binaries. We hope this motivates radio astronomers to localize new classes of sources that might arise from neutron star of magnetar binaries."