We downloaded the raw Chandra X-ray data on Sirius B and analyzed it ourselves. A white dwarf producing X-rays via thermal emission should produce perfectly random photon arrival times. The photons are not random. Something is grouping them — and the grouping turns on and off mid-observation.
The photons cluster more than they should. At 3.1 million events, even a small deviation is statistically enormous. The deviation is 5.4% above Poisson randomness.
There’s a 31.22 Hz periodic signal. It appears 350× above the noise floor. Not a detector artifact — it appears on both halves of the detector, in both soft and hard X-rays. It turns on for ~2.8 hours then goes completely silent.
The harmonics line up with Schumann resonances. The fundamental is 2.6% off Schumann’s 4th harmonic. The subharmonic is 0.4% off Schumann’s fundamental (7.83 Hz).
We don’t know what this is. No astrophysics paper has reported it. The data is public. Anyone can reproduce it.
Expected std/mean for thermal emission: 1.000 (Poisson). Measured: 1.054. At N=3.1M, this is a >50σ deviation.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Frequency | 31.219509 Hz (period = 32.031254 ms) |
| FFT power | 13,095 (noise threshold 37.3) — 350× above noise |
| Deviation from 31.25 Hz | 0.10% |
| Segment | Time | FFT Power | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0–1.4h | 132 | Weak |
| 2 | 1.4–2.8h | 18 | Gone |
| 3 | 2.8–4.2h | 5,671 | Strong |
| 4 | 4.2–5.6h | 34,834 | Peak |
| 5 | 5.6–7.0h | 169 | Gone |