CHAPEL HILL, N.C., June 4 -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill issued the following news release:
A small, dense dead star caught tearing material from a companion star has helped astronomers solve one of the universe's most perplexing mysteries and researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill played a key role in uncovering the answer.
Working as part of an international collaboration, Carolina astronomers Dr. Igor Andreoni, Dr. Brad Barlow and doctoral student Jonathan Carney helped identify the source of a mysterious class of cosmic signals known as long-period radio transients. The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, provide some of the strongest evidence yet for the origin of these unusual bursts of radio waves, which can repeat...