Then it's a slow pulsar LOL
Sorry, I had to make it :)
Article says it's a theoretically possible object described as "slow magnetar".
Don't be so serious my friend, it was an easy joke, i know :)
Is that really that mysterious? Just seems they went out of their way for clickbaity title.
That's correct. The original paper doesn't call it mysterious, just "unusual".
Science PR people are under a lot of stress to get pageviews.
The original description was most likely “hmmm… that’s funny”.
The mysterious (unpredicted/as yet unexplained) aspect is the precise physics of its emission properties. It's a refinement of known physics sure, but that doesn't make it less interesting. Not unlike how finally completing a full physics accounting for how bicycles remain upright would be fascinating even if positively pedestrian.
Pulsars usually "pulse" very rapidly and in very short bursts[0]. This one pulses only once every 18 minutes, but in bursts that seem to last for a minute. Some articles mention the possibility of a star-quake which as I _think_ could be caused by either further decay of the magnetar, or the magnetar absorbing more mass
to continue our idle lazy speculation game “explain the title without really reading”, perhaps it’s just doppler effect…
Doppler effect would reduce both the emission interval as well as the radio frequency. Not to mention that an object (which is comparatively close to us, i.e. not just red-shifted due to distance) would have to move at very close to the speed of light to be red-shifted that much. Now that would be unlike anything we've seen before...