An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The day before a Texas antiporn law that requires age verification to access adult websites was set to take effect, the state's attorney general, Angela Colmenero, has been at least temporarily blocked from enforcing the law. US District Judge David Alan Ezra granted a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking enforcement after the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) joined adult performers and sites like Pornhub in a lawsuit opposing the law. Today, they convinced Ezra that Texas' law violates the First Amendment and would have "a chilling effect on legally-protected speech," FSC said in a press release.

"This is a huge and important victory against the rising tide of censorship online," Alison Boden, FSC's executive director, said. "From the beginning, we have argued that the Texas law, and those like it, are both dangerous and unconstitutional. We're pleased that the court agreed with our view that [the law's] true purpose is not to protect young people, but to prevent Texans from enjoying First Amendment protected expression. The state's defense of the law was not based in science or technology, but ideology and politics." Now, Texas will have to wait until this lawsuit is litigated to enforce the law. [...] According to FSC, in addition to free speech concerns, the law needed to be blocked because it would have exposed consumers to "significant privacy risks" by forcing adult-website visitors to show digital IDs. A spokesperson for Pornhub's parent company Aylo told Ars: "We are pleased with the court's decision today, which reaffirms our position that the age verification law implemented in Texas is unconstitutional. We have publicly supported mandatory age verification of viewers of adult content for years, but any method of age verification must preserve user privacy and safety."

"The only solution that makes the Internet safer, preserves user privacy, and stands to prevent children from accessing age-inappropriate content is performing age verification at the device level," Aylo's spokesperson said. "We are pleased that the court recognizes the severity of compelled speech and its presence in this law that Texas has implemented. We are proud to fight for our industry and the performers that use it to legally earn a living, and we are glad to see the court recognize that this law is unconstitutional and would have required adult entertainers to falsely imply that their content poses health risks."

A similar age verification initiative in Australia was halted yesterday, citing concerns around privacy and security of the technology.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: NASA officials sounded an alarm Tuesday about the agency's Deep Space Network, a collection of antennas in California, Spain, and Australia used to maintain contact with missions scattered across the Solar System. Everything from NASA's Artemis missions to the Moon to the Voyager probes in interstellar space rely on the Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive commands and transmit data back to Earth. Suzanne Dodd, who oversees the DSN in her position at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, likes to highlight the network's importance by showing gorgeous images from missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Perseverance rover on Mars. "All these images, and all these great visuals for the public, and all the science for the scientists come down through the Deep Space Network," Dodd said Tuesday in a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council's Science Committee.

But Dodd doesn't take a starry-eyed view of the challenges operating the Deep Space Network. She said there are currently around 40 missions that rely on the DSN's antennas to stay in communication with controllers and scientists back on Earth. Another 40-plus missions will join the roster over the next decade or so, and many of the 40 missions currently using time on the network will likely still be operating over that time. "We have more missions coming than we currently are flying," Dodd said. "We're nearly doubling the load on the DSN. A lot of those are either lunar exploration or Artemis missions, and a lot of Artemis precursor missions with commercial vendors. So the load is increasing, and it's very stressful to us." "It's oversubscribed, yet it's vital to anything the agency wants to do," she said.

Vint Cerf, an Internet pioneer who is now an executive at Google, sits on the committee Dodd met with Tuesday. After hearing from Dodd and other NASA managers, Cerf said: "The deep space communications system is in deep -- well, let me use a better word, deficit. There's a four-letter word that occurs to me, too." Because astronauts are involved, the Artemis missions will come with unique requirements on the DSN. "We're not going to have bits of data. We're going to have gigabits of data," said Philip Baldwin, acting director of the network services division at JPL. "I don't want 1080p for video resolution. I want 8K video." Each of the three stations on the Deep Space Network has a 70-meter (230-foot) dish antenna, the largest antennas in the world for deep space communications. Each location also has at least three 112-foot (34-meter) antennas. The oldest of the large antennas in California entered service in 1966, then was enlarged to its 70-meter diameter in 1988. "We have reached a really critical point on the DSN's aging infrastructure," said Sandra Cauffman, deputy director of NASA's astrophysics division.

The federal government of Australia will not force adult websites to bring in age verification due to concerns around privacy and security of the technology. The Guardian reports: On Wednesday, the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, released the eSafety commissioner's long-awaited roadmap for age verification for online pornographic material, which has been sitting with the government since March 2023. The federal government has decided against forcing sites to bring in age verification technology, instead tasking the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, to work with the industry to develop a new code to educate parents on how to access filtering software and limit children's access to such material or sites that are not appropriate.

"It is clear from the roadmap at present, each type of age verification or age assurance technology comes with its own privacy, security, effectiveness or implementation issues," the government's response to the roadmap said. The technology must work effectively without circumvention, must be able to be applied to pornography hosted outside Australia, and not introduce the risk to personal information for adults who choose to access legal pornography, the government stated. "The roadmap makes clear that a decision to mandate age assurance is not yet ready to be taken."

The new tranche of codes will be developed by eSafety following the implementation of the first set of industry codes in December this year. The government will also bring forward an independent statutory review of the Online Safety Act in 2024 to ensure it is fit for purpose and this review will be completed in this term of government. The UK's approach to age assurance will also be monitored as the UK is "a key likeminded partner." The report suggested to trial a pilot of age assurance technologies, but this was not adopted by the government. The report also noted the government's development of a digital ID in the wake of the Optus and Medibank data breaches, but said it was not suggesting the government ID be used for confirming ages on pornographic websites.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A neurosurgeon in Australia pulled a wriggling 3-inch roundworm from the brain of a 64-year-old woman last year -- which was quite the surprise to the woman's team of doctors and infectious disease experts, who had spent over a year trying to identify the cause of her recurring and varied symptoms. A close study of the extracted worm made clear why the diagnosis was so hard to pin down: the roundworm was one known to infect snakes -- specifically carpet pythons endemic to the area where the woman lived -- as well as the pythons' mammalian prey. The woman is thought to be the first reported human to ever have an infection with this snake-adapted worm, and it is the first time the worm has been found burrowing through a mammalian brain. [...]

Subsequent examination determined the roundworm was Ophidascaris robertsi based on its red color and morphological features. Genetic testing confirmed the identification. The woman went on ivermectin again and another anti-parasitic drug, albendazole. Months later, her lung and liver lesions improved, and her neuropsychiatric symptoms persisted but were improved. The doctors believe the woman became infected after foraging for warrigal greens (aka New Zealand spinach) around a lake near her home that was inhabited by carpet pythons. Usually, O. robertsi adults inhabit the snakes' esophagus and stomach and release their eggs in the snakes' feces. From there, the eggs are picked up by small mammals that the snakes feed upon. The larvae develop and establish in the small mammals, growing quite long despite the small size of the animals, and the worm's life cycle is complete when the snake eats the infected prey.

Doctors hypothesize the woman picked up the eggs meant for small mammals as she foraged, ingesting them either by not fully washing or cooking the greens or by not properly washing her hands or kitchen equipment. In retrospect, the progression of her symptoms suggests an initial foodborne infection, followed by worm larva migrating from her gastrointestinal tract to multiple organs. The prednisolone, an immunosuppressive drug, may have inadvertently helped the worm migrate and get into the central nervous system. Kennedy, a co-author of the report on the woman's case, stressed the importance of washing any foods foraged or taken from a garden. She also emphasized proper kitchen safety and hand washing.

One of the world's biggest scientific publishers has retracted a journal article that claimed to have found no evidence of a climate crisis. From a report: Springer Nature said it had retracted the article, by four Italian physicists, after an internal investigation found the conclusions were "not supported by available evidence or data provided by the authors." Climate sceptic groups widely publicised the article, which appeared in the European Physical Journal Plus in January 2022 -- a journal not known for publishing climate change science.

Nine months later the article was reported uncritically in a page one story in the Australian newspaper and promoted in two segments on Sky News Australia -- a channel that has been described as a global hub for climate science misinformation. The segments were viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube. The article claimed to have analysed data to find no trend in rainfall extremes, floods, droughts and food productivity. "In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet," the article said.

Several climate scientists told the Guardian and later the news agency AFP that the article had misrepresented some scientific articles, was "selective and biased" and had "cherrypicked" information. After those concerns were raised, Springer Nature announced in October it was investigating the article. In a statement Springer Nature said its editors had launched a "thorough investigation," which included a post-publication review by subject matter experts. The authors of the article also submitted an addendum to their original work during the course of the investigation, the statement said.

According to a team of researchers from RMIT University in Australia, coffee grounds can be used as a silica substitute in the concrete production process to yield a significantly stronger chemical bond than sand alone. Engadget reports: "The disposal of organic waste poses an environmental challenge as it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases including methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to climate change," lead author of the study, Dr Rajeev Roychand of RMIT's School of Engineering, said in a recent release. He notes that Australia alone produces 75 million kilograms of used coffee grounds each year, most of which ends up in landfills. Coffee grounds can't simply be mixed in raw with standard concrete as they won't bind with the other materials due to their organic content, Dr. Roychand explained. In order to make the grounds more compatible, the team experimented with pyrolyzing the materials at 350 and 500 degrees C, then substituting them in for sand in 5, 10, 15 and 20 percentages (by volume) for standard concrete mixtures.

The team found that at 350 degrees is perfect temperature, producing a "29.3 percent enhancement in the compressive strength of the composite concrete blended with coffee biochar," per the team's study, published in the September issue of Journal of Cleaner Production. "In addition to reducing emissions and making a stronger concrete, we're reducing the impact of continuous mining of natural resources like sand," Dr. Roychand said.

Amazon has filed a lawsuit against a group of online stores that sell pirated DVDs of key titles such as "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" and "The Peripheral." TorrentFreak reports: In a complaint filed at a California federal court, Amazon accuses seven websites of selling pirated discs. These sites, including dvdshelf.com.au, dvds.trade, and dvdwholesale.co.uk, are presumably operated by the same group, using a variety of companies. For the public at large, it may not be immediately obvious that these discs are pirated. However, since Amazon doesn't produce or sell DVDs for these Prime Video series, there is no doubt that they are created from illicit sources.

The piracy operation consists of at least seven websites and these all remain online today. According to Amazon, the sites ship to customers in the U.S. and abroad, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, resulting in mass copyright infringement. Before going to court, investigators conducted more than twenty test purchases of pirated DVDs. After these orders arrived, Amazon sent the discs to the Motion Picture Association which independently confirmed that they were all pirated.

The complaint lists Yangchun Zhang as a key suspect. This person presumably resides in China and obtained the 'DVD Shelf' trademark in Australia. In addition, Zhang is also listed as the registrant of several of the domain names involved. The complaint accuses Zhang and the others of both copyright and trademark infringement. Through the lawsuit (PDF), Amazon hopes to recoup damages, which can run in the millions of dollars. Another key priority is to shut the sites down and Amazon asks the court for an injunction to stop all infringing activity.

A U.S. court in Washington, D.C. today has ruled that artwork created by artificial intelligence without any human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. Reuters reports: Only works with human authors can receive copyrights, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said on Friday, affirming the Copyright Office's rejection of an application filed by computer scientist Stephen Thaler on behalf of his DABUS system. The Friday decision follows losses for Thaler on bids for U.S. patents covering inventions he said were created by DABUS, short for Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience. Thaler has also applied for DABUS-generated patents in other countries including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and Saudi Arabia with limited success.

Remember when your email address came from your ISP?

Now the cost for small companies to offer email service "has gone up in server and administration costs," reports the Guardian, "without the economies of scale." But in Australia, this has created a problem for people like the Canberra-based customer of iiNet who's had the same email address since the 1990s... TPG — which owns brands that have historically offered email including iiNet all the way back to OzEmail — informed customers in July that it would migrate their email to a separate private service, the Messaging Company, by the end of November. Users will keep their exisiting email addresses on this service, and would get it free for the first year. After that, there will be options of paying for a service, or an ad-based free service after that. The amount to be charged from next year has not yet been decided.

The announcement was met with outrage among users of the long-running web forum Whirlpool. "It's a shitty move. My wife has never set up a Gmail or Yahoo and only ever used her iiNet email address for her business as well as personal. This screws us royally," one user said.

"Us oldies couldn't start out using Gmail etc because they weren't in existence 25 years ago," another said.

"It's a nightmare trying to change logins at many places...."

The other factor is the increasing security risk. Legacy systems, particularly those managed under a variety of absorbed companies, as with TPG, can over time become more at risk of a cybersecurity attack or breach. External providers who offer this service either in place of, or on behalf of the internet service provider are becoming seen as the more secure option....

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network chief executive, Andrew Williams, says that ultimately internet providers getting out of the email game is a good thing because it means customers don't feel locked into one internet company...

With the rise in data breaches, and the avalanche of spam and scams, the shift offers people the opportunity of a clean email slate, according to Andrew Williams, of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.

Researchers seem to have solved the puzzle of LK-99. Scientific detective work has unearthed evidence that the material is not a superconductor, and clarified its actual properties. Nature: The conclusion dashes hopes that LK-99 -- a compound of copper, lead, phosphorus and oxygen -- marked the discovery of the first superconductor that works at room temperature and ambient pressure. Instead, studies have shown that impurities in the material -- in particular, copper sulfide -- were responsible for the sharp drops in electrical resistivity and partial levitation over a magnet, which looked similar to properties exhibited by superconductors. "I think things are pretty decisively settled at this point," says Inna Vishik, a condensed-matter experimentalist at the University of California, Davis.

The LK-99 saga began in late July, when a team led by Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim at the Quantum Energy Research Centre, a start-up firm in Seoul, published preprints claiming that LK-99 is a superconductor at normal pressure and temperatures up to at least 127C (400 kelvin). All previously confirmed superconductors function only at extreme temperatures and pressures. The extraordinary claim quickly grabbed the attention of the science-interested public and researchers, some of whom tried to replicate LK-99. Initial attempts did not see signs of room-temperature superconductivity, but were not conclusive. Now, after dozens of replication efforts, many experts are confidently saying that the evidence shows LK-99 is not a room-temperature superconductor. The South Korean team based its claim on two of LK-99's properties: levitation above a magnet and abrupt drops in resistivity. But separate teams in Beijing, at Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), found mundane explanations for these phenomena.

Another study, by US and European researchers, combined experimental and theoretical evidence to demonstrate how LK-99's structure made superconductivity infeasible. And other experimenters synthesized and studied pure samples of LK-99, erasing doubts about the material's structure and confirming that it is not a superconductor, but an insulator. The only further confirmation would come from the Korean team sharing their samples, says Michael Fuhrer, a physicist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. "The burden's on them to convince everybody else," he says. Perhaps the most striking evidence for LK-99's superconductivity was a video taken by the Korean team that showed a coin-shaped sample of silvery material wobbling over a magnet. The team said the sample was levitating because of the Meissner effect -- a hallmark of superconductivity in which a material expels magnetic fields. Multiple unverified videos of LK-99 levitating subsequently circulated on social media, but none of the researchers who initially tried to replicate the findings observed any levitation.

Dell has been fined more than $6.5 million by Australian regulators after it was found to have misled consumers on discounted hardware prices. From a report: The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) imposed a $10 million AUS fine on the tech giant for "making false and misleading representations" about discounted prices for add-on computer monitors. Dell Australia admitted that it has misled customers over prices available on monitors in 'bundle' packages alongside desktop, laptop, or notebook devices. Add-on monitors were "often advertised with a higher 'strikethrough' price," an investigation by the regulator found. These strikethrough prices were framed as a way for consumers to make significant savings on monitors if purchased alongside other computing products.

However, these discounted prices were often overstated, with the regulator ruling that the monitors were not sold for discounted prices in many instances. Dell also conceded it misled customers about the discounted price of add-on monitors with statements such as "Total Savings," "Includes x% off," "Discounted Price," and "Get the best price for popular accessories when purchased with this product." The ACCC said in a statement, "In many cases, consumers paid more than if they had purchased the monitor as a standalone product."

The Australian news service 9News reports on the "strongest sign yet" that Australia is headed toward a "totally cashless society... the number of notes in circulation officially declining for the first time since dollars and cents were introduced in 1966." According to data from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), more than a billion dollars worth of physical cash disappeared from circulation in the last financial year, a shift that's likely to make life more difficult for the elderly and for those in the regions. Authorities say less cash will also hurt the nation's criminals, who rely heavily on its use, making it harder for them to make transactions undetected...

The RBA's survey of consumers' payment trends revealed that a third of Aussies now consider themselves "low cash users" — meaning they claim to use cash for less than 20 per cent of all their in-person transactions. In 2019, about half of the nation's residents were reported as such... It's expected that cash use will continue to decrease in the coming years, similar to the use of cheques, which are set to wrap up completely in the country by 2030.

"NASA has reestablished full communications with Voyager 2," according to a mission update posted Friday: The agency's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar "shout" more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.
"Had the Earth-based signals not reached Voyager 2, the spacecraft is already programmed to reorient itself multiple times a year to keep its antenna pointing in our planet's direction," CNN points out. "The next reset was already scheduled for October 15. But the team didn't want to wait that long..."

After controllers sent the wrong command to the 46-year-old spacecraft, Voyager 2's antenna needed to be shifted "a mere 2 degrees," notes The Associated Press:

Voyager 2 has been hurtling through space since its launch in 1977 to explore the outer solar system. Launched two weeks later, its twin, Voyager 1, is now the most distant spacecraft — 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away — and still in contact. As long as their plutonium power holds, the Voyagers may be alive and well for the 50th anniversary of their launch in 2027, according to Dodd. Among the scientific tidbits they've beamed back in recent years include details about the interstellar magnetic field and the abundance of cosmic rays.

India has confirmed that an object that washed up on a Western Australian beach recently was from one of its rockets. The BBC reports: The giant metal dome was found at Green Head beach, about 250km (155 miles) north of Perth, in mid-July -- prompting speculation about its origins. India's space agency spokesman told the BBC on Monday it was from one of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLV). Sudhir Kumar added that it would be up to Australia to decide what to do with the object. He did not comment further. His comments came after the Australian Space Agency (ASA) on Wednesday said that the object was "most likely" the third stage of a PSLV, which are used by India to launch satellites into orbit.

The ASA said it was working with India's space agency to "determine next steps, including considering obligations under the United Nations space treaties." According to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, countries are required to return any "foreign" space objects found in their territory to the owners. Western Australia has already indicated it would be happy to keep it. The state's premier, Roger Cook, suggested to local media that the object could be stored in the state museum alongside debris from Nasa's Skylab station, which was discovered in 1979. Locals said they might be interested in turning it into a local tourist attraction, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

An Australian Senate committee has recommended a ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from federal government devices be extended to China's most popular social media platform, WeChat. From a report: The Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media also recommended in a report late Tuesday that social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter should become more transparent or be fined. Committee chair James Paterson said on Wednesday the report's recommendations would make Australia a more difficult target for the serious foreign interference risks that the nation faced. "It tackles both the problems posed by authoritarian-headquartered social media platforms like TikTok and WeChat and Western-headquartered social media platforms being weaponized by the actions of authoritarian governments including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter," Paterson told reporters.

As corporate leaders call for an end to pandemic-era remote work arrangements, unions in Australia are setting a precedent and fighting back, taking to court the country's biggest bank and wrangling with the federal government to demand WFH, as it is known, to become the norm. From a report: "All the deep changes in the Australian labour market have come out of crises. When you have a jolt, you never return to the way the world was," said John Buchanan, head of the University of Sydney's Health and Work Research Network. "We're always ahead of the pack in the English-speaking world, say compared to the UK, US, New Zealand." Empowered by the lowest unemployment rate in half a century, staff at Commonwealth Bank of Australia took the A$170 billion ($114 billion) lender to the industrial tribunal to challenge a directive to work from the office half of the time.

The United Nations' cultural protection agency, UNESCO, plans to recommend adding Venice to its list of World Heritage sites in danger, as the iconic island city faces simultaneous threats from climate change, mass tourism and rapid urban development. From a report: The designation, meant to encourage remedial actions and marshal international support for World Heritage sites, is recommended in a UNESCO report published Monday ahead of its World Heritage Committee meeting in September. The List of World Heritage in Danger identifies dozens of sites that are "threatened by serious and specific dangers," such as armed conflict or natural disasters. It includes Odessa in Ukraine, which was added in January because of war-related threats, and the Everglades in Florida, which faces environmental degradation.

The proposal by UNESCO is the latest alarm bell over the future of Venice -- one of the world's most fragile and popular cities -- as well as the Italian government's efforts to protect it. Built across 118 small islands, the city was first designated as a World Heritage site in 1987 for its architectural splendor and work of master artists including Giorgione and Titian, among others. "It is tragic that the state of conservation of one of the most treasured cultural sites in the world is of such concern" that experts are considering Venice for the "in danger" list, Helene Marsh, a professor of environmental science at Australia's James Cook University who has researched climate change and World Heritage sites, said in an email. A warming world poses an "existential threat" to preservation and conservation, Marsh said.

UN scientific advisors have recommended the Great Barrier Reef not be placed on a list of World Heritage sites "in danger" but stressed the planet's biggest coral reef system remains under "serious threat" from global heating and water pollution. From a report: Unesco said in a report that the Australian government had taken positive steps to protect the reef since a UN monitoring mission visited Queensland in March last year. But Unesco has in effect put Australia on notice, as it recommended the government provide a progress report in February before the reef is considered for inscription on the "in danger" list again in 2024. The government said the report was confirmation it was acting on climate change and "working hard to protect the reef, and that the rest of the world has taken notice."

A key congressional committee on Wednesday advanced a bipartisan bill that aims to develop a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, a milestone for Capitol Hill in its efforts to codify federal oversight for the digital asset industry. From a report: The bill passed by the House Financial Services Committee would define when a cryptocurrency is a security or a commodity and expand the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) oversight of the crypto industry, while clarifying the Securities and Exchange Commission's jurisdiction, as many crypto advocates complain of the agency's perceived overreach. A handful of Democrats, including Reps. Jim Himes and Ritchie Torres, joined committee Republicans in voting for the bill. The House Agriculture Committee is scheduled to consider the same bill Thursday. "As other jurisdictions like the UK, the [European Union], Singapore and Australia have moved forward with clear regulatory frameworks for digital assets, the United States is at risk of falling behind. We intend to change that today," said Representative Patrick McHenry, the Republican chair of the House Financial Services Committee, at the markup.

In 2018 a doctoral student spotted "a spinning celestial space object," reports CNN. "The unfamiliar object released giant bursts of energy and beamed out radiation three times per hour."

But that was just the beginning... In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth through radio telescopes, acting like a celestial lighthouse. Researchers thought the phenomenon might be a remnant of a collapsed star — either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star — with a strong magnetic field. Or perhaps the object was something else entirely... "We were stumped," said Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker, senior lecturer at the Curtin University node of ICRAR, in a statement. "So we started searching for similar objects to find out if it was an isolated event or just the tip of the iceberg." The team observed the sky using the Murchison Widefield Array, a radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country in outback Western Australia, between July and September 2022. The scientists discovered an object 15,000 light-years from Earth in the Scutum constellation. The object, dubbed GPM J1839-10, released radio waves every 22 minutes. The bursts of energy lasted up to five minutes.

Astronomers believe it could be a magnetar, or a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that is capable of releasing powerful, energetic bursts. But if the object is a magnetar, it defies description because all known magnetars release energy in a matter of seconds, or a few minutes at the most. A study detailing the discovery was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "This remarkable object challenges our understanding of neutron stars and magnetars, which are some of the most exotic and extreme objects in the Universe," said Hurley-Walker, who was the lead author of the new report...

"Assuming it's a magnetar, it shouldn't be possible for this object to produce radio waves. But we're seeing them. And we're not just talking about a little blip of radio emission. Every 22 minutes, it emits a five-minute pulse of radio wavelength energy, and it's been doing that for at least 33 years. Whatever mechanism is behind this is extraordinary."
The astronomers "searched through the archives of radio telescopes that have been operational for decades," the article points out — and ultimately confirmed the existence of the phenomenon. "It showed up in observations by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India and the Very Large Array in the USA had observations dating as far back as 1988," Hurley-Walker said.

"That was quite an incredible moment for me. I was five years old when our telescopes first recorded pulses from this object, but no one noticed it, and it stayed hidden in the data for 33 years. They missed it because they hadn't expected to find anything like it."