Think of them as the dynamic duo of the universe: No, they're not caped crusaders but a red dwarf star and a white dwarf, a dead star. Together, they have been sending a steady radio pulse every two hours for at least 10 years.
Scientists have heard their transmission but until recently no one knew the source of the sounds, which appeared to emanate from the direction of the Big Dipper. This past spring, the signals were found to come from a binary system - two stars - that send the pulse by repeated contact between their magnetic fields. Researchers cracked the mystery with the help of a low-frequency array radio telescope. The discovery debunks the long-held belief that only highly magnetized neutron stars known as magnetars, can emit such pulses.
This challenge to the old way of thinking opens up the chance to explore other mysteries and binary systems.
Researchers call this binary star system ILTJ1101. Although it sounds like a very large and exotic callsign for this long-distance transmitter, it's not. Still, with all those steady, regular signals over the years, this pair surely deserves some kind of operating award.