This Bright Dot May Be an Entirely New Type of Space Object

0
7KB

At first, the dot looked like any other star. Then the astrophysicists switched to polarized light and found themselves looking at an entirely unexpected sight.

“Everything else disappeared, even the bright central black hole, and only this little dot remained,” Elena Shablovinskaia, an astrophysicist at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, told Gizmodo. Shablovinskaia’s team believes they’ve discovered an entirely new kind of space object, which they’ve dubbed “Punctum.”

Like its name, Latin for “point” or “dot,” Punctum is a compact, bright splotch of light in space—but it’s only visible at millimeter wavelengths and harbors an unusually organized magnetic field. A paper on Punctum has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics and is currently available on arXiv.

Punctum Map Ngc 4945
ALMA imaging of the galaxy NGC 4945. Punctum is the small dot inside the box. Credit: Elena Shablovinskaia et al., 2025

The team wanted to show that Punctum is simply an unusual example of a known phenomenon, such as a magnetar or a supernova remnant. NGC 4945, where Punctum lives, is a nearby galaxy known for hosting an active population of baby stars—so it made sense to assume Punctum was one of them. After all, NGC 4945 resides so close to the Milky Way that astrophysicists thought they had a solid grasp of the galaxy. We couldn’t have missed something “hiding in plain sight,” as Shablovinskaia put it…could we? 

But the more they tried to force Punctum into established astrophysical wisdom, the more it seemed to defy it. For example, Punctum disappeared when the team checked the same region using X-ray or radio telescopes, appearing only in the millimeter spectrum with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA’s ability to capture polarized light also revealed Punctum’s weird magnetic field to the scientists, adding to its mystery.

“So we compared its brightness, polarization, and spectrum to every extreme object we could think of—magnetars, pulsars, star-forming regions, and black hole jets,” Shablovinskaia recalled. “Nothing matched.”

But accepting that they’d struck something entirely new only raised more questions. What exactly is it? Where does Punctum—10,000 to 100,000 times brighter than magnetars and 10 to 100 times brighter than most supernovas—get its light? Could it be connected to a black hole or a neutron star? 

For Shablovinskaia, the best shot at finding the answer might be to investigate Punctum’s strange polarization, “basically a fingerprint of the magnetic environment,” she said. After all, the disturbingly neat alignment of the light waves around Punctum was what alerted the team to the object’s weirdness.

“Usually, when light is produced in cosmic environments, it comes out mixed and disordered because the magnetic fields are tangled,” she explained. “If we can measure [Punctum’s magnetic field] at more wavelengths or watch how it changes over time, we can start to figure out what powers Punctum and whether it links to known astrophysical objects.”

“Punctum shows us the universe can still surprise us in places we thought we understood well,” Shablovinskaia said. “For me, it’s a reminder that astronomy is far from finished; we’re still just beginning to discover the full variety of cosmic objects out there.”

The new research marks another strong example of multi-messenger astronomy, in which astronomers use different kinds of signals to investigate a single source. Recently, astronomers found an ultramassive black hole using gravitational lensing. In this case, the scientists studied a specific behavior of light—polarization—alongside more conventional methods to double-check their results. 

Like
Love
Haha
3
Rechercher
Catégories
Lire la suite
News
Không còn cấp huyện, ai là người được quyền bổ nhiệm, miễn nhiệm hiệu trưởng trường cấp 1, cấp 2?
Thẩm quyền điều hành chuyển về cấp xã Trong hướng dẫn...
Par THEDARKKCHILD 2025-08-13 04:59:08 0 8KB
News
Đề xuất chính sách miễn phí bảo hiểm y tế chưa từng có với một số đối tượng, người dân cần nắm rõ để kẻo bị thiệt thòi
Trong một nỗ lực nhằm tăng cường an sinh xã hội và mở...
Par PlushyPenguin 2025-06-18 22:46:07 0 10KB
News
nhìn đúng điểm này biết ngay na chín tự nhiên không phun thuốc, quả nào cũng ngon ngọt, dày thịt ít hạt
Dưới đây là 3 mẹo đơn giản giúp bạn dễ dàng chọn được...
Par BubblyKisses4 2025-08-15 03:31:09 0 8KB
News
Khung cảnh hoang vắng bên trong trường đại học hơn 10ha vừa bị Bộ Giáo dục đình chỉ hoạt động
Đình chỉ hoạt động Trường Đại học Hà Hoa Tiên (Hà...
Par Gameguylikesgames 2025-07-04 06:57:04 0 10KB
News
Từ năm 2027, kỳ thi tốt nghiệp THPT sẽ được thí điểm tổ chức trên máy tính
Tại Hội nghị toàn quốc về công tác tổ chức kỳ thi tốt...
Par ParticularCorner2190 2025-06-22 13:42:05 0 9KB