WAVES AND HUMS
Mysterious radio waves from space and a Yorkshire drone
WEIRD STAR
Something towards the centre of the Milky Way is intermittently blasting out radio waves, seemingly at random, but what it might be is far from clear. Nicknamed “Andy’s Object” – after Ziteng “Andy” Wang, the astronomer at the University of Sydney, Australia, who discovered the phenomenon – it seems to emit radio waves for a few weeks, then stops for a time before waking up for another burst. Wang and his colleagues recorded six periods of emissions during 2020, ranging from several weeks to less than a day, so they arranged to have some of the most powerful non-radio telescopes point at it to get a better idea of what was generating them. Absolutely nothing could be detected except for the radio waves. “We’ve looked at every other wavelength we can, all the way from the infrared to optical to X-rays, and we see nothing, so it doesn’t seem to be consistent with any kind of star that we understand,” said astronomer David Kaplan. The high polarisation of the radio waves suggests the object has a magnetic field and the fact that the strength of the waves varied massively within a burst, and that they faded incredibly fast when they ended, suggests the object is small; but no known astronomical object fits all the characteristics. Until more powerful telescopes become available in the next few years, Andy’s object will probably remain mysterious. Newscientist. com, 12 Oct 2021.
COSMIC COINCIDENCES
In 2020 a team of astronomers made scientific history with a claim to have captured the most distant cosmic explosion ever, a gamma ray burst in the galaxy GN-z11, caused by a star collapsing to form a black hole. They reckoned the odds of spotting such a burst happening were 10 billion to one. Now it turns out that the odds were against them; two studies analysing the result have concluded it was sunlight glinting off space debris orbiting Earth that coincidentally hit the telescope at just the right moment, not a cosmic cataclysm. Science.org, 4 Oct 2021.
In April, astronomers at the Parkes Murriyang radio telescope detected an anomalous five-hour-long burst of radio signals from the direction of our nearest star system, Proxima Centauri. This contains at least one potentially habitable planet, so it was immediately noted as of possible alien origin. Now, though, several similar signals from around the same time but on different wavelengths have been found showing a pattern consistent with interference from malfunctioning electronics on Earth near the telescope. That the signal appeared when they were observing Proxima Centauri was probably just a coincidence the researchers said. A previous promising signal turned out to be scientists microwaving their lunch. livescience.com, 26 Oct 2021.
HALIFAX HUM
Meanwhile, back on Earth, a village in West Yorkshire became the latest location to be afflicted by a mystery hum, something that, over the years, has driven residents round the twist in locations as widely spaced as Bristol, Durham and Paignton (for recent cases see 278:8, 291:14, 341:22-23, 349:10, 391:17).
Since April 2020, early in the 2020 lockdown, residents of the village of Holmfield, on the outskirts of Halifax, have been subjected to an annoying persistent hum, described as a “continuous washing-machinelike drone”. All attempts to locate its source or shut it down have proved futile, complicated by the fact that while some locals find the noise intrusive and unbearable, others cannot hear it at all.
Simon Speechley, 43, who gets regular headaches due to the hum, said: “What I understand is there’s been a hum there for decades, but I’m convinced something happened during lockdown to make it far more pervasive.” Describing the hum itself, he says: “It’s travelling through the ground and reverberating up into people’s houses. That’s why you close your windows and it makes no difference. It’s inside already.” Some residents have been afflicted by migraines due to the hum and others have had to change their working hours because of a lack of rest, or book into hotels for the weekend to get respite.
Suspicion has fallen on an industrial estate near the village, although during the lockdown, when the hum is believed to have started, most of the companies there were not operating. Calderdale councillor Scott Patient said that the council “is convinced there is not one single source of noise and some have been discounted. They are still making tenable inquiries and as long as this exists will continue to investigate.” bbc. co.uk/news, 12 Oct 2021; metro. co.uk, 17 Oct 2021.