Scientists spot a blinking star’s ‘totally unexpected’ behaviour

The celestial object could be a slow spinning magnetar

Scientists have detected what appears to be an incredibly dense star behaving unlike anything else ever seen - and suspect it might be a type of exotic astrophysical object whose existence has been only hypothesised until now.

The object, spotted using the Murchison Widefield Array telescope in outback Western Australia, unleashed huge bursts of energy roughly three times per hour when viewed from Earth during two months in 2018, the researchers said.