"If we answer," warns Thorne, "we are answering a question that was asked billions of years ago. We are shouting into a graveyard. But the temptation is too great. We have to know what they were trying to say."

The desert night in Atacama is cold. The wind whips across the observatory domes, kicking up dust that hasn't seen rain in a century. Inside, the screens glow with the soft blue light of the data stream.

In this feature, I treat "HAVD 837" as a mysterious, newly discovered anomaly—an object or signal that challenges our understanding of history and physics.