{"id":230219,"date":"2026-01-31T01:24:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T07:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/puzzling-slow-radio-pulses-are-coming-from-space-a-new-study-could-finally-explain-them"},"modified":"2026-01-31T01:24:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T07:24:23","slug":"puzzling-slow-radio-pulses-are-coming-from-space-a-new-study-could-finally-explain-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/puzzling-slow-radio-pulses-are-coming-from-space-a-new-study-could-finally-explain-them","title":{"rendered":"Puzzling slow radio pulses are coming from space. A new study could finally explain them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/puzzling-slow-radio-pulses-are-coming-from-space-a-new-study-could-finally-explain-them.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cosmic radio pulses repeating every few minutes or hours, known as long-period transients, have puzzled astronomers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.icrar.org\/xray-transient\/\" target=\"_blank\">since their discovery in 2022<\/a>. Our new study, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41550-025-02760-y\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Nature Astronomy<\/i><\/a> today, might finally add some clarity.<\/p>\n<p>Radio astronomers are very familiar with pulsars, a type of rapidly rotating neutron star. To us watching the skies from Earth, these objects appear to pulse because powerful radio beams from their poles sweep our telescopes\u2014much like a cosmic lighthouse.<\/p>\n<p>The slowest pulsars rotate in just a few seconds\u2014this is known as their period. But in recent years, long-period transients have been discovered as well. These have periods from <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/this-object-in-space-flashed-brilliantly-for-3-months-then-disappeared-astronomers-are-intrigued-175240\" target=\"_blank\">18 minutes<\/a> to more than <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41550-024-02452-z\" target=\"_blank\">six hours<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cosmic radio pulses repeating every few minutes or hours, known as long-period transients, have puzzled astronomers since their discovery in 2022. Our new study, published in Nature Astronomy today, might finally add some clarity. Radio astronomers are very familiar with pulsars, a type of rapidly rotating neutron star. To us watching the skies from Earth, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}