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The abstract of the article suggests it is a magnetar, which depending on your mood could be counted as a type of pulsar, though it's probably more sensible to

The abstract of the article suggests it is a magnetar, which depending on your mood could be counted as a type of pulsar, though it's probably more sensible to label both as types of neutron stars. > By measuring the dispersion of the radio pulses with respect to frequency, we have localized the source to within our own Galaxy and suggest that it could be an ultra-long-period magnetar.

dekhn 5y ago
but... magnetars aren't mysterious or unlike anything astronomers have seen. The most the press release says is that it's brighter or closer than previous ones.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The article is quite clear that this one exhibits characteristics predicted, but not previously observed, and with some surprises. > But Dr Anderson said finding something that turned on for a minute was really weird. > Dr Hurley-Walker said the observations match a predicted astrophysical object called an ‘ultra-long period magnetar’. > “But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright. “Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before.”
  - dekhn 5y ago
    this is not what astronomers or physicists think is mysterious. Just unexpected, and within the bounds of normal physical science. Everybody who is complaining that the PR about the paper is clickbait is right. The PR is just clickbait. The paper is not.
    - idiotsecant 5y ago
      If I saw a bright pink duck I would wonder how that duck came to be. If someone called it's origins mysterious I wouldn't write a string of angry HN posts about it, I don't think.
      - dekhn 5y ago
        If I saw a bright pink duck I would expect that a neighbor's kid had painted the duck. Horses, not zebras, unless you're on the african savannah.
        isaacimagine 5y ago
        Did the kid paint the radio waves too? In all seriousness, why is it brighter than expected? What's the expected brightness for such an object, and how many error bars is it away from this value?
        dekhn 5y ago
        See the text after Figure 4, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04272-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04272-x Since I am not an expert astronomer (just a helpful computational person who has worked in the field) I can't give you a detailed ELI5, but they talk a lot about how it looks different from existing examples, and how to find more examples of this type (so you can do surveys; modern astronomers don't like to study one-offs, as they are biased, and instead prefer to accumulate a larger sample of instances).
      - me_me_me 5y ago
        Your analogy is incorrect. The existence of this megastar was falls under theoretically possible but never discovered. Analogous would be an albino duck, existence inferred from albinos existing in every animal, but say an albino duck was not observed before. Discovering bright pink duck would be akin to discovering something that our models cannot account for or explain.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Again, from the article. > “But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright. “Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before.” That's interesting, and apparently unexpected.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ehnto 5y ago
      There is value to pop-sci's romantic relationship with new discoveries in science. I don't think it hurts anyone in the target demographic to enable their sense of curiosity and wonder. Clickbait is hardly a fair term, as this article hardly shares a floor with true clickbait like false death rumours, hate and fear mongering, and outright falsehoods.
      - dekhn 5y ago
        Of all the replies to my comments, this is the best one I've seen. You're right that science reporting should instill wonder, it probably isn't that excessive to say it's mysterious or bizarre (my complaint is more the "we've never seen something like this so far" but let's not get into the semiotics of unsupervised clustering), and it's unfair to lump this in with Really Bad Clickbait. I just have a strong aversion to the science->PR->news hype cycle and that's what happened here.

dekhn 5y ago

but... magnetars aren't mysterious or unlike anything astronomers have seen. The most the press release says is that it's brighter or closer than previous ones.

ceejayoz 5y ago
The article is quite clear that this one exhibits characteristics predicted, but not previously observed, and with some surprises. > But Dr Anderson said finding something that turned on for a minute was really weird. > Dr Hurley-Walker said the observations match a predicted astrophysical object called an ‘ultra-long period magnetar’. > “But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright. “Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before.”
- dekhn 5y ago
  this is not what astronomers or physicists think is mysterious. Just unexpected, and within the bounds of normal physical science. Everybody who is complaining that the PR about the paper is clickbait is right. The PR is just clickbait. The paper is not.
  - idiotsecant 5y ago
    If I saw a bright pink duck I would wonder how that duck came to be. If someone called it's origins mysterious I wouldn't write a string of angry HN posts about it, I don't think.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      If I saw a bright pink duck I would expect that a neighbor's kid had painted the duck. Horses, not zebras, unless you're on the african savannah.
      - isaacimagine 5y ago
        Did the kid paint the radio waves too? In all seriousness, why is it brighter than expected? What's the expected brightness for such an object, and how many error bars is it away from this value?
        dekhn 5y ago
        See the text after Figure 4, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04272-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04272-x Since I am not an expert astronomer (just a helpful computational person who has worked in the field) I can't give you a detailed ELI5, but they talk a lot about how it looks different from existing examples, and how to find more examples of this type (so you can do surveys; modern astronomers don't like to study one-offs, as they are biased, and instead prefer to accumulate a larger sample of instances).
    - me_me_me 5y ago
      Your analogy is incorrect. The existence of this megastar was falls under theoretically possible but never discovered. Analogous would be an albino duck, existence inferred from albinos existing in every animal, but say an albino duck was not observed before. Discovering bright pink duck would be akin to discovering something that our models cannot account for or explain.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Again, from the article. > “But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright. “Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before.” That's interesting, and apparently unexpected.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ehnto 5y ago
    There is value to pop-sci's romantic relationship with new discoveries in science. I don't think it hurts anyone in the target demographic to enable their sense of curiosity and wonder. Clickbait is hardly a fair term, as this article hardly shares a floor with true clickbait like false death rumours, hate and fear mongering, and outright falsehoods.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      Of all the replies to my comments, this is the best one I've seen. You're right that science reporting should instill wonder, it probably isn't that excessive to say it's mysterious or bizarre (my complaint is more the "we've never seen something like this so far" but let's not get into the semiotics of unsupervised clustering), and it's unfair to lump this in with Really Bad Clickbait. I just have a strong aversion to the science->PR->news hype cycle and that's what happened here.