An international team of astronomers has detected a cosmic phenomenon never seen before—an object that emits simultaneous pulses of radio waves and X-rays for two minutes, repeating the cycle every 44 minutes. The signal has been named ASKAP J1832-0911 and is located in our galaxy, the Milky Way, about 15,000 light-years from Earth.
The finding, published in the journal Nature, was made by researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in collaboration with scientists from several international institutions.
It is the first time a long-period transient (LPT) that emits X-rays has been detected, which could help explain the origin of other mysterious signals that scientists have captured in the universe.
The ASKAP radio telescope, located in Wajarri Country (Australia) and operated by the national science agency CSIRO, was the first to identify the object. Later, researchers discovered that NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory had been observing the same region of the sky at nearly the same time and confirmed that ASKAP J1832-0911 also emitted high-energy pulses.
Discovering that this object was emitting X-rays was like finding a needle in a haystack, explained Dr. Ziteng (Andy) Wang, lead researcher of the study and a member of Curtin University at ICRAR. ASKAP has a wide field of view, whereas Chandra observes only a small fraction of the sky. It was a fortunate coincidence that both telescopes caught the same signal.
Until now, only about a dozen long-period transients had been known, all of them detected after 2022. These objects emit radio pulses separated by minutes or hours, but ASKAP J1832-0911 is the first that also emits X-rays, making it a unique case.
Scientists believe it could be a magnetar, that is, the collapsed core of a dead star with extremely intense magnetic fields. Another possibility is that it is a binary system formed by a normal star and a highly magnetized white dwarf, but neither of these explanations fully fits what has been observed.
This object is unlike anything we’ve seen before, admitted Dr. Wang. It could be pointing to a new type of physics or a stellar evolution model we don’t yet know.
X-rays are much more energetic than radio waves, so the mechanism producing them must be extremely powerful, noted the study’s co-author, Professor Nanda Rea, from the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) in Spain.
The discovery suggests there could be many more such objects in our galaxy. Finding one implies there’s a hidden population waiting to be discovered, said Rea. The transient X-ray emission gives us crucial clues to understand their nature.
SOURCES
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR)
Wang, Z., Rea, N., Bao, T. et al. Detection of X-ray emission from a bright long-period radio transient. Nature (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09077-w
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