“This event is challenging our understanding of X-ray outbursts: too short to be an ordinary stellar flare, but too faint to be linked to a compact object,” explains collaborator Sandro Mereghetti, lead author of the paper presenting the results.
Another possibility is that the source is a so-called chromospherically active binary, a dual system of stars with intense X-ray activity caused by processes in their chromosphere, an intermediate layer in a star’s atmosphere. But even in this case, it does not closely match the properties of any known object of this class.
Interesting. I guess an alien source was ruled out due to magnitude of the source. Still, would be interesting to see if there is potentially an underlying communication pattern there.
I’d imagine they ruled out an alien source simply because any astronomical phenomenon could be produced by aliens. Thinking about that for anything slightly unusual is just burdensome cognitive overhead.
Similar to how cosmologists aren’t satisfied with “god did it” as an explanation. :)
It doesn't appear that the high school students are authors on the paper. Academic papers place authors at the top of the paper (some exceptions for e.g. huge collaborations with hundreds of authors) and acknowledgments at the end of the paper. It appears the article follows this pattern, so I don't find it at all "offensive" coming from an academic background; simply different conventions of where names appear, but they are listed.
Another possibility is that the source is a so-called chromospherically active binary, a dual system of stars with intense X-ray activity caused by processes in their chromosphere, an intermediate layer in a star’s atmosphere. But even in this case, it does not closely match the properties of any known object of this class.
Interesting. I guess an alien source was ruled out due to magnitude of the source. Still, would be interesting to see if there is potentially an underlying communication pattern there.