Are aliens trying to contact Earth? Scientists discover a mysterious stellar object that emits a five-minute pulse every 22 minutes – and they have no idea what it is

If aliens made contact with Earth, what would it sound like?

Such a scenario has been conceived countless times in science fiction, but in reality we have no evidence that aliens even exist.

That hasn’t dampened the excitement that an advanced civilization could be there, though, and the discovery of a mysterious stellar object that emits a five-minute pulse every 22 minutes will only add to that.

Plus, the scientists who discovered it aren’t 100 percent sure what it is.

An international team of astronomers led by Australia’s Curtin University thinks it could be an ultra-long-period magnetar — a rare type of star with the most powerful known magnetic fields in the universe.

This allows them to produce extremely powerful bursts of energy at intervals ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes.

What’s so unusual about the new discovery, however, is that it emits radio waves every 22 minutes.

This makes it the magnetar with the longest period ever detected.

It has been doing so for at least 33 years, leading to speculation that it might have some sort of link to aliens.

“The mechanism behind this is extraordinary,” says lead author Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker.

Magnetars are a type of neutron star – an incredibly dense object composed mostly of tightly packed neutrons, which arise from the collapsed core of a massive star during a supernova.

Dr. Hurley-Walker said the magnetar in question, named GPM J1839-10, was 15,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scutum.

“This remarkable object challenges our understanding of neutron stars and magnetars, which are some of the most exotic and extreme objects in the universe,” she added.

The stellar object is only the second of its kind ever detected.

The discovery came about through the first observation of an ultra-long-period magnetar, which produced a giant burst of energy three times an hour and was unlike anything astronomers had seen before.

Discovered by student Tyrone O’Doherty, an undergraduate researcher from Curtin University — and made public last year — it left the institution’s scientists “stunned.”

“We looked for similar objects to find out if it was an isolated event or just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Hurley-Walker.

Between July and September 2022, the team scanned the sky using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country in outback Western Australia.

It wasn’t long before they discovered GPM J1839-10.

Other telescopes, including three CSIRO radio telescopes in Australia, the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, the Grantecan (GTC) 10m telescope and the XMM-Newton space telescope helped confirm the discovery.

The team also searched the archives of the world’s top radio telescopes and found that GPM J1839-10’s signal had been detected as far back as 1988.

“That was an incredible moment for me,” Dr. Hurley-Walker said.

“I was five years old when our telescopes first recorded pulses from this object, but no one noticed and it remained hidden in the data for 33 years.

“They missed it because they didn’t expect to find anything like it.”

Researchers say their discovery raises new questions about the formation of magnetars and may even shed light on the origins of mysterious phenomena such as fast radio bursts.

Recorded in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum, these strangely bright flashes of light appear momentarily and randomly from space.

They were first discovered only 15 years ago, but scientists have never known where they came from.

Researchers now want to make further observations to see if they can spot similar stellar objects like GPM J1839-10.

This could help them confirm once and for all whether these mysterious things are ultra-long-period magnetars, or perhaps something even more phenomenal.

Maybe even with a link to aliens.

The new discovery has been published in the journal Nature.