NGC 4945 is a well-known spiral galaxy, about 11 million light-years from us. It has an active supermassive black hole at its center, as well as a lot of new stars being born around it, a phenomenon known as a starburst. Among the many signals from the core of this galaxy, astronomers have found one that is both unique and perplexing. It does not match anything known. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

They are calling it Punctum, which is Latin for “dot,” and it was discovered using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, ALMA . It is located less than 200 light-years from the supermassive black hole, and since in a handful of wavelengths, it emits 100 times more energy than a star like Sirius does across all wavelengths, i

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