Astronomers have discovered some unusual structures in space that they have identified as radio circles (ORCs). These structures are so large that they can be a million light-years in diameter, and scientists have found five of them so far, with the possibility of finding six more in the future. ORCs are a mystery to scientists, and they don’t know how they formed or what caused them to form.
ORC1 (ORC J2103-6200) is called the first radio circle. These radio circles were recently discovered using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. Elis Paceto, a radio astronomer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the discovery would inspire new scientific research among astronomers.
According to Barbel Korybalsky, a radio astronomer at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, ORC1 looks like an egg or a soap bubble. The outer circle is over a million light-years in diameter, ten times the size of our Milky Way galaxy.
ORCs are a new discovery, and astronomers first detected them three years ago using the Australian Radio Telescope. At first, the scientists thought they had a problem with their instruments, but they soon realized that these structures were real. ORC will only be visible in the radio spectrum. Three of its five have a core associated with visible galaxies.
There are three possible explanations for ORC. The first is that they are seeing the remnants of an incredibly large explosion at the center of a galaxy. Scientists do not know what would cause such an explosion, but it could be the merger of two supermassive black holes.
A second explanation is that ORCs are shockwaves from the creation of millions of stars. A third explanation is that they are jets that shoot out very energetic particles into the galaxy. ORCs are faint rings that surround a galaxy with a very active black hole at its center, but scientists don’t know why they are so rare.
After observing ORC1, scientists found it interesting. They believe that these structures were formed about a billion years ago. We are still discovering new things about our universe and we still have a lot to know.