Scientists Find Cosmic 'Rosetta Stone' To Decode Baffling Signals From Deep Space

Astronomers traced the mysterious long-period radio transient ASKAP J1745-5051 to a magnetic cataclysmic variable binary.

The system appears to feature a white dwarf accreting material from a companion red dwarf, producing periodic radio and X-ray signals.

The finding is the strongest evidence yet that at least some long-period radio transients originate from interacting white dwarf binaries.

It helps narrow one of time-domain astronomy’s biggest open questions about the source of these puzzling signals.