New discoveries ALMA studies ‘pregnant’ clouds in the Milky Way

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Rotating jets solve ‘merry-go-round’ problem of star formation

Stars are born from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. But the material in the cloud doesn’t directly fall into the newborn star. Instead, it first heaps up in a flattened, rotating disk. And that poses a problem to astronomers. The disk rotates pretty fast, so how does the...

Young Galaxies Are Surrounded by Huge ‘Atmospheres’

Planet Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere – a thin layer of gas. Some other planets, and most stars, also have atmospheres. In many cases, they’re much more extended than the atmosphere of Earth. ALMA has now discovered two young galaxies that really take the biscuit: their ‘atmospheres’ extend...

‘Hole in the ALMA sky’ is produced by hot cluster gas

Do you see the large ‘hole’ in this ALMA image? It looks as if someone cut a circular hole in a blue veil, with a large cluster of galaxies right behind the hole. But appearances can be deceiving. In fact, the ‘blue veil’ originates behind the galaxy cluster. It’s...

ALMA witness stellar growth spurt

Have you ever experienced a growth spurt? Three times within a year or so, you need new T-shirts or new shoes, just because you’re growing so fast. It happens with teenagers, but also with baby stars. By comparing new ALMA observations with older measurements from another observatory, astronomers have...

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