New discoveries Mysterious Activity Detected in Galaxy M83

Welcome to the ALMA website for kids!

Discover the world's largest observatory with Talma and Mathias

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Do astronomers live at ALMA?

If you hold your breath for too long, you will die. Your body needs the oxygen in the air. Without getting enough oxygen, you can’t survive. That’s why divers always take bottles of oxygen with them. After all, under water there is no air to breathe. At the ALMA...

The electromagnetic spectrum

The Sun emits light. Sunlight appears white, but it consists of different colors, as can be seen in the rainbow. Every color has its own wavelength: red waves of lights are longer than violet waves of light. But there’s more than the visible colors of the rainbow. Scientists have...

Did life originate in space?

Did you know that you are made of star stuff? It’s true! Many of the atoms in your body were created in other stars. It’s one of the most exciting discoveries in science ever made. When the Universe was very young, billions of years ago, there were only very...

How do stars and planets form?

You live on a planet, called Earth. Together with seven other planets, Earth circles around the Sun. As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in our solar system where life exists. Life needs a planet to live on. And life needs a star to get energy from....

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New discoveries

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Say cheese, black hole – you’re on camera!

For the first time ever, astronomers have taken a photo of a black hole. Black holes are regions in space where gravity is extreme. Everything that comes too close is sucked in. And nothing can ever get out again. Even light, traveling at 300,000 kilometers per second, cannot escape...

‘Night vision’ helps to take the temperature of the rings of Uranus

Astronomers have obtained new images of the rings of Uranus, a distant planet in our own solar system. The new images were made by two big observatories: ALMA, and the European Very Large Telescope (VLT). The astronomers were also able to take the temperature of the rings for the...

ALMA finds evidence for two generations of stars in distant galaxy

Suppose you use a telescope to study a village on a distant mountain slope. In the village, you only see young children. Apparently, the village has only recently become inhabited. But there’s a mystery. The graveyard of the village if pretty full! Now you start to wonder: maybe people...

ALMA sees galaxy collision in early universe

Thirteen billion years ago, two small galaxies crashed into each other. The ALMA observatory has now witnessed this collision. Never before have astronomers seen a galaxy smashup so early in the history of the universe. The cosmic traffic accident happened when the universe was less than one billion years...

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