London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 30, 2025

Gigantic, Near-Perfectly Circular Radio Objects Found in Distant Universe Baffle Scientists

Gigantic, Near-Perfectly Circular Radio Objects Found in Distant Universe Baffle Scientists

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), a powerful telescope developed and operated by the country’s science agency CSIRO, became fully operational in February 2019 and has been conducting pilot surveys of the sky to map the structure and evolution of the Universe.

Recent research may hold the clue to an enigma that has been puzzling astronomers over the past few years.
A mysterious handful of huge, almost perfectly circular radio objects, located in a distant universe, are yet to be explained by science.

Now, a new one has been spotted and added to the list by a team of scientists, who posted their findings on 27 April to the preprint database arXiv. The research has since been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. This discovery may be the first step towards finally finding out what they are.


‘Odd Radio Circles’


It all started after the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), in Western Australia, became operational in 2019.

ASKAP is a telescope designed over a decade ago that scans the heavens in the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and started producing pilot surveys of the night sky ahead of planned large-scale projects from 2021 onward.


The telescope uses a novel technology developed by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which is a kind of a “radio camera”, consisting of 36 dish antennas.

ASKAP scientists were always keeping an eye out "for whatever is weird, whatever is new, and whatever looks like nothing else," according to Bärbel Koribalski, a galactic astronomer at CSIRO and Western Sydney University, Australia, cited by Live Science.

While scanning data, member of the scientific team Anna D. Kapińska of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico, spotted four bright radio circles.

However, as attempt to observe them via telescopes in other wavelengths, the search failed to find anything. Thus, the team dubbed them “odd radio circles” (ORCs). Each of the ORCs had a galaxy sitting almost exactly in its centre. The entities were determined to be several billion light-years away, and potentially a few million light-years in diameter.


In their paper published last year, the team came up with 11 possible explanations as to what they could be, ranging from imaging glitches, warps in space-time (Einstein rings), or remnants from a supernova explosion.

This composite image made available by NASA shows a neutron star, center, left behind by the explosion from the original star's death in the constellation Taurus, observed on Earth as the supernova of A.D. 1054. This image uses data from three of NASA's observatories: the Chandra X-ray image is shown in blue, the Hubble Space Telescope optical image is in red and yellow, and the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared image is in purple. After nearly two decades in Earth orbit, scanning the universe with infrared eyes, ground controllers plan to put the faltering Spitzer Space Telescope into permanent hibernation on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2020


After finding one more ORC since then, the team has narrowed their theories down to three potential explanations, according to Koribalski.

The first is that they may be additional galaxies forming a cluster near the object. Possibly, they bend bright material into a ring-like structure too faint to be picked up by current telescopes.

The second is that the supermassive black hole inside these galaxies is consuming gas and dust. This would result in cone-shape jets of particles and energy being produced.

There is also another more “exciting” explanation, in line with which some unknown, highly energetic event took place in the middle of these galaxies.

It might have generated a blast wave that travelled out as a sphere, thus producing the ring structure. Further telescope observations in other wavelengths are now required to help scientists unravel the mystery of what is going on.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×