Astronomers have taken a close-up image of a rare and mysterious space object, rekindling interest in learning more about it.
ORCs (odd radio circles) are massive rings of radio waves.
Only five have ever been seen, and they were never seen in such detail.
The first ORCs were discovered using the Australian SKA Pathfinder Telescope two years ago.
These circles are huge, spanning a million light-years in diameter.
That’s 16 times the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.
According to astronomers, it takes 1 billion years for these circles to reach their maximum size.
Multiple ORCs have become so enormous that they have passed across many galaxies.
According to discoveries published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a new image acquired by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s MeerKAT telescope shows ORCs in more detail.
The ORC’s huge outer circle is possibly more than a million light years across, 10 times the diameter of the Milky Way, with a succession of smaller rings inside, according to new MeerKAT radio data.
Bärbel Koribalski, a radio astronomer at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Sydney, compares it to a Fabergé egg or a soap bubble.
Three theories have been offered to explain the origin of ORCs.
The first is that they are formed by a shock wave from the galaxy’s centre, similar to what occurs when two supermassive black holes collide.
The ORC’s shape is created, according to the second theory, by the actions of an active galactic nucleus, with radio jets spewing particles.
ORCs, according to the third theory, are shells formed by starbursts at the centre of their galaxies.
(With inputs from agencies)
