Astronomers spot spooky object on Milky way

New Delhi : Astronomers in Australia have spotted a spooky object spinning in milky way, they say it is something they have never seen before.

The object was first spotted by a university student during the research for his Undergraduate thesis. The unidentified object is believed to be sending huge burst of radio energy three times every hour.

The pulse comes "every 18.18 minutes, like clockwork," said astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker.

Finding this object was "kind of spooky for an astronomer," she said, "because there's nothing known in the sky that does that."

The research team is now working hard to determine the object and know more about it.

According to the astronomers, the object is about 4000 light years away from the earth. It also has a very strong magnetic field.

"If you do all of the mathematics, you find that they shouldn't have enough power to produce these kind of radio waves every 20 minutes," Hurley-Walker said.

"It just shouldn't be possible."

The object may be something researchers have theorised could exist but have never seen called an "ultra-long period magnetar".

While the researchers are working on gathering more knowledge about the object, they have also started searching similar objects in the milky way.

"More detections will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we'd never noticed before," Hurley-Walker said.