Star releasing huge bursts of energy may be 1st of its kind ever discovered

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 until now been only hypothesized.

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.

It may be the first known example of what is called an “ultra-long period magnetar,” they said. This is a variety of a neutron star — the compact collapsed core of