New discoveries Mysterious Activity Detected in Galaxy M83

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Massive baby star also has rotating jet

Here’s the story of the birth of a massive star. It all starts with a huge cloud of gas and dust. The cloud contracts under its own gravity. It gets smaller and denser. It also starts to rotate faster and faster. Due to the rotation, the cloud begins to...

Hold your breath: oxygen found in the very early Universe

Every breath you take contains a lot of oxygen. Oxygen gas is an important ingredient of our atmosphere. Without it, there would be no human life on Earth. Astronomers know that all oxygen atoms in the Universe were produced in stars. When the Universe was born in the Big...

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...

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