Cosmic Waltz: How a White Dwarf Became a Radio Beacon ✦
Original: "Periodic Radio and X-ray Emission from an Accreting White Dwarf Binary"
Astronomers have for the first time directly linked mysterious long-period radio transients to an accreting white dwarf, with pulses born in a tight dance with a companion star.
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A white dwarf the size of Earth and a red dwarf circle in a deadly waltz, producing radio pulses a hundred times hotter than the Sun's core. Like a stellar orchestra playing on the strings of a magnetic field. Such systems could be the key to the nature of the most mysterious radio transients and even harbingers of supernovae.
🎯 In the radio signal of ASKAP J1745−5051, 'modulation bands' were noticed — interference patterns previously observed only in decametric radiation from Jupiter from its moon Io.
T_B = \frac{F_{\nu} c^2}{2 k_B \nu^2 \Omega} > 10^{12}\,\text{K}
where Fν is the flux density, c is the speed of light, kB is the Boltzmann constant, ν is the frequency, Ω is the solid angle of the source.