HIGHLIGHTS 

A university student was the first to find the item.

It emits a pulse every 18 minutes or so, according to researchers.

It's unlike anything astronomers have ever seen, they claimed.

WHY IN NEWS 

Researchers from Australia have discovered a strange spinning object in our galaxy that flashes at regular intervals, but they have no idea why. Except for the fact that it gives out radio signals three times an hour and is located within the Milky Way, not much is known about this intriguing object. The object is around 4,000 light-years from Earth, which is a significant distance for us. This item, according to the researchers, is unlike anything they've ever seen. A university student spotted the item initially, and others built on his work subsequently. 

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After the student's discovery, Natasha Hurley-Walker, who headed the inquiry, claimed the pulse occurs every 18 minutes, 'in precisely the same position and at exactly the same frequency — like nothing astronomers have ever seen before.' She gathered data for her research using the Murchison Widefield Array, a telescope in Western Australia. Her team is now attempting to comprehend what they have discovered. Supermassive black holes are the brightest radio sources. 'What had we discovered that was even brighter than that?' Hurley-Walker reported on her findings in The Conversation.

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She broke out in a cold sweat as she said that she was seeking for recurrent radio signals transmitting at a single frequency all across the planet. Usually, this refers to extraterrestrial intelligence. But, when the radio waves spread across a wide variety of frequencies, she exhaled a sigh of relief. As a result, she explained, the energy necessary to produce it would have to come from a natural rather than an artificial source. The researcher team was able to establish a few facts about the item while working with the data: It's around 4,000 light-years away from Earth, highly bright, and has a powerful magnetic field. There might be two basic possibilities for why this 'compact, spinning, and extremely magnetic astrophysical object' is acting this way, according to Hurley-Walker. She suggested that it may be a white dwarf or a neutron star. The possibility of discovering a neuron star is exciting since one has never been discovered that is extremely bright and emits radio messages at regular intervals. The existence of such objects, known as 'ultra-long period magnetars,' is solely theoretical.