London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Sep 01, 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
Chinese and Indian Leaders Pursue Amity Amid Global Shifts
European Union Plans for Ukraine Deployment
ECB Warns Against Inflation Complacency
Concerns Over North Cyprus Casino Development
Shipping Companies Look Beyond Chinese Finance
Rural Exodus Fueling European Wildfires
China Hosts Major Security Meeting
Chinese Police Successfully Recover Family's Savings from Livestream Purchases
Germany Marks a Decade Since Migrant Wave with Divisions, Success Stories, and Political Shifts
Liverpool Defeat Arsenal 1–0 with Szoboszlai Free-Kick to Stay Top of Premier League
Prince Harry and King Charles to Meet in First Reunion After 20 Months
Chinese Stock Market Rally Fueled by Domestic Investors
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
Ukrainian Nationalist Politician Andriy Parubiy Assassinated in Lviv
Corporate America Cuts Middle Management as Bosses Take On Triple the Workload
Parents Sue OpenAI After Teen’s Death, Alleging ChatGPT Encouraged Suicide
Amazon Faces Lawsuit Over 'Buy' Label on Digital Streaming Content
Federal Reserve Independence Questioned Amid Trump’s Push to Reshape Central Bank
British Politics Faces Tumultuous Autumn After Summer of Rebellions and Rising Farage Momentum
US Appeals Court Rules Against Most Trump-Era Tariffs
UK Sought Broad Access to Apple Users’ Data, Court Filing Reveals
UK Bank Shares Dive Over Potential Tax on Sector
Germany’s Auto Industry Sheds 51,500 Jobs in First Half of 2025 Amid Deepening Crisis
Bruce Willis Relocated Due to Advanced Dementia
French and Korean Nuclear Majors Clash As EU Launches Foreign Subsidy Probe
EU Stands Firm on Digital Rules as Trump Warns of Retaliation
Getting Ready for the 3rd Time in Its History, Germany Approves Voluntary Military Service for Teenagers
Argentine President Javier Milei Evacuated After Stones Thrown During Campaign Event
Denmark Confronts U.S. Diplomat Over Covert Trump-Linked Influence in Greenland
Starmer Should Back Away from ECHR, Says Jack Straw
Trump Demands RICO Charges Against George Soros and Son for Funding Violent Protests
Taylor Swift Announces Engagement to NFL Star Travis Kelce
France May Need IMF Bailout, Warns Finance Minister
Chinese AI Chipmaker Cambricon Posts Record Profit as Beijing Pushes Pivot from Nvidia
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
Ukraine Finally Allows Young Men Aged Eighteen to Twenty-Two to Leave the Country
The Porn Remains, Privacy Disappears: How Britain Broke the Internet in Ten Days
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Welcome to The Definition of Insanity: Germany Edition
Just a reminder, this is Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris.
Spotify’s Strange Move: The Feature Nobody Asked For – Returns
Manhunt in Australia: Armed Anti-Government Suspect Kills Police Officers Sent to Arrest Him
China Launches World’s Most Powerful Neutrino Detector
How Beijing-Linked Networks Shape Elections in New York City
Ukrainian Refugee Iryna Zarutska Fled War To US, Stabbed To Death
Elon Musk Sues Apple and OpenAI Over Alleged App Store Monopoly
2 Australian Police Shot Dead In Encounter In Rural Victoria State
Vietnam Evacuates Hundreds of Thousands as Typhoon Kajiki Strikes; China’s Sanya Shuts Down
UK Government Delays Decision on China’s Proposed London Embassy Amid Concerns Over Redacted Plans
A 150-Year Tradition to Be Abolished? Uproar Over the Popular Central Park Attraction
×