Astronomers detect powerful cosmic object unlike anything they've seen before

(Live Science) - Astronomers have discovered a mysterious, flickering object in the Milky Way that belches enormous amounts of energy toward Earth three times an hour.

This strangely powerful object — located about 4,000 light-years from the sun — is unlike any cosmic structure ever observed, researchers wrote in a study published Jan. 26 in the journal Nature

The object in question — named GLEAM-X J162759.5-523504.3 (but let's call it GLEAM for short) — appeared out of nowhere on a recent radio wave survey of the Milky Way. According to the researchers, GLEAM brightened rapidly over the course of about 60 seconds, briefly becoming one of the brightest objects in the entire sky, then suddenly disappeared into darkness again. About 20 minutes later, the object reappeared — steadily glowing to peak brightness once again, before dimming back to nothing a minute later.

Objects like these, which appear and disappear before our telescope lenses, are known as transients. Typically, transients represent either a dying star (a supernova) or the bizarre, rapidly- spinning corpse of an already-dead star, also known as a neutron star. However, neither of those standard explanations quite fit with the behavior of this newfound object, researchers wrote in the new study.

It's possible that the mysterious GLEAM is evidence of a new type of stellar object that has only been theorized until now — or even one that astronomers haven't even dreamt up.

"This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations. That was completely unexpected," lead study author Natasha Hurley-Walker, a radio astronomer at Curtin University in Bentley, Australia, said in a statement.