Mysterious Entity In Neighboring Galaxy Shooting Radiowaves At Earth, But It's Cool, Probably Just...

Mysterious Entity In Neighboring Galaxy Shooting Radiowaves At Earth, But It’s Cool, Probably Just A Microquasar Strangely Bereft Of X-rays

A mysterious new celestial entity in the nearby galaxy of M82 is beaming radiowaves toward Earth unlike any others scientists have seen before. “The new object, which appeared in May 2009, has left us scratching our heads,” said Tom Muxlow, of University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory. “We’ve never seen anything quite like this before.” The scientists, who have been sitting on this information for almost a year, don’t seem to be panicking, so I guess we shouldn’t either. Though the waves are headed right toward us, and are sneakily appearing to move sideways. As New Scientist reports: “Its apparent sideways velocity is four times the speed of light. Such apparent ‘superluminal’ motion has been seen before in high-speed jets of material squirted out by some black holes. The stuff in these jets is moving towards us at a slight angle and travelling at a fair fraction of the speed of light, and the effects of relativity produce a kind of optical illusion that makes the motion appear superluminal.” (I know, I know, “high-speed jets of material squirting out of black holes…” Yeah, yeah. Did M82 have Mexican food for lunch or whatever. Grow up. This is Science.)

Some people think it might be a microquasar, a small black hole that results from the explosion of a star that starts feeding on gasses emitted from another star. But as everybody knows, microquasars usually send out lots of X-rays, and no X-rays have been detected from this thing. “So that’s not right either,” Muxlow said.

Maybe it’s Monster Magnet. I hope so.