Astronomers have discovered something in outer space. That is what they do but what they’ve found this time is highly unusual and it quite literally has them running around in circles. 

Some background information to get things started – A large group of astronomers are currently trying to build the world’s largest radio telescope array, called the Square Kilometre Array. Unfortunately, there are no points being awarded to those of you who’ve guessed how large it is. 

It’s a total area of one square kilometre, with the individual telescopes split between Australia and South Africa. Meanwhile, a lot of the necessary technology is being tested in smaller arrays, such as the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP).

ASKAP tests technologies and does useful information retrieval in the form of deep-space radio surveys. During one such survey, done for a new project called the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU), astronomers found three of these objects while mapping the night sky. They suspected them to be glitches since the ASKAP was one of the most sensitive radio telescopes and they were testing new technology. The first two could be glitches but then all three? Unlikely.  

What ASKAP found, the previously mentioned objects, were… circles. 

Now radio circles in radio surveys aren’t exactly a surprise by themselves. It’s more these circles in particular that astound them. 

There are a lot of things that make circular-shaped radio emissions: galaxies in periods of star formation, planetary nebulae, leftovers from supernova explosions, and even materials just hanging out nearby random stars. But these radio circles don’t seem to match any of the known circle-making phenomena. They don’t match with any known physical process, and they don’t look like anything observed before.

Thus they were christened with the name of Odd Radio Circles, or ORCs. 

(They had to name them something, doesn’t mean it had to be good – there’s a reason they study astrology and not onomatology)

Then they found the fourth circle in archival data collected by the Giant MetreWave Radio Telescope in India. Then the astrologers decided to dig deeper. The ORCs are visible only at radio wavelengths, and can’t be seen in X-ray, optical or infrared wavelengths. Two of the ORCs have a galaxy near the centre of the circles, but the others don’t. ORC 3 appears as a uniform disk, while the other three look more like rings. 

In conclusion – they don’t know what they’ve found.

They could be from hidden galaxies, new exploding star-related phenomena or tricks of gravity caused by more mysterious space things. The biggest challenge of analyzing these OCRs is that we don’t know how big they are and neither do we know how far away they could be. 

Fact is, they’re just radio space circles and they’re just… Odd