Astronomers have discovered a record-breaking burst of energy coming from deep space, tracing it to a binary system containing a tiny red dwarf star and a dead stellar remnant called a white dwarf.
The team from the Curtin University node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) discovered the pulse of bright energy in archival low-frequency data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). This radio wave pulse, designated GLEAM-X J0704-37, erupts every three hours, with these bursts lasting between 30 and 60 seconds. That makes this signal the longest-period example of a rare and extreme phenomenon called "long-period radio transients."
