Inexplicably, an object in space has been blinking every 20 minutes for 35 years.

Astronomers are constantly making discoveries that push the boundaries of our current understanding of the cosmos. But sometimes they encounter objects that defy all explanation, like the new astronomical conundrum discovered by researchers some time ago. Dubbed GPM J1839-10, the new object acts a bit like a pulsar, sending out bursts of radio energy roughly every twenty minutes. But the physics that drives pulsars means that if they slow down too much, they’ll stop glowing, and nearly every pulsar we know blinks at least once a minute.

No explanation available

GPM J1839-10 was discovered by chance during a search for transient objects (flicker radio sources) in the galactic plane. One of the most widely known types of transient objects are neutron stars called pulsars. Neutron stars form when fusion reactions stop at the center of an extremely massive star, collapsing under its own weight to become an object roughly the size of a city but millions of times heavier than a planet, and its density is on the verge of becoming a black hole. Such stars emit extremely powerful radio wave beams from their magnetic poles, which, due to the star’s extremely fast rotation, cause it to appear to flash rapidly or “pulse” when viewed from Earth.

But the rhythm of the GPM J1839-10 is much slower. It seems to repeat the signal roughly every 22 minutes, with each burst lasting between 30 seconds and five minutes. So it doesn’t match the behavior of any of the neutron stars we know of. A study of archival data shows that signals were detected in the area as far back as 1988. So whatever is generating this signal means that the phenomenon producing these bursts is not a one-time event.

Articles mentioning GPM J1839-10 in 2020 and January of this year suggest it could be an extremely rare type of magnetar with an ultra-long pulse period. Magnetars are another type of neutron star that emits the strongest magnetic field in the universe, 1,000 times stronger than a typical neutron star and a trillion times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field. Whatever this object is, it could significantly impact our current understanding of the final stages of stellar life cycles.