Category Astronomy/Space

Astronomers using ALMA have uncovered chemical ‘fingerprints’ of methanol, dimethyl ether, and methyl formate in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The latter two molecules are the largest organic molecules ever conclusively detected outside the Milky Way. The far-infrared image on the left shows the full galaxy. The zoom-in image shows the star-forming region observed by ALMA. It is a combination of mid-infrared data from Spitzer and visible (H-alpha) data from the Blanco 4-meter telescope. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); Herschel/ESA; NASA/JPL-Caltech; NOAO

The nearby dwarf galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a chemically primitive place...

Illustration showing spacecraft of ESA’s Cluster mission (top) and NASA’s THEMIS mission (bottom) flying through Earth’s magnetosheath, the highly turbulent boundary region between the solar wind and the magnetosphere around our planet. Credit: European Space Agency

For the first time, scientists have estimated how much energy is transferred from large to small scales within the magnetosheath, the boundary region between the solar wind and the magnetic bubble that protects our planet. Based on data collected by ESA’s Cluster and NASA’s THEMIS missions over several years, the study revealed that turbulence is the key, making this process a hundred times more efficient than in the solar wind.

It is the interaction between Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind that creates the intricate s...

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals a glistening and ancient globular cluster named NGC 3201—a gathering of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Sarajedini et al

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals a glistening and ancient globular cluster named NGC 3201—a gathering of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity. NGC 3201 was discovered in 1826 by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, who described it as a “pretty large, pretty bright” object that becomes “rather irregular” towards its center.

Globular clusters are found around all large galaxies, but their origin and role in galaxy formation remain tantalizingly unclear...

​Magnetic fields play an important role in the places where most massive stars are born. In this illustration, bright spots represent the sources of radio signals from methanol masers, and the curved lines represent the magnetic field.​​​​​​​ ​Wolfgang Steffen/Boy Lankhaar et al. (molecules: Wikimedia Commons/Ben Mills)

A team of scientists, led by Boy Lankhaar at Chalmers University of Technology, has solved an important puzzle in astrochemistry: how to measure magnetic fields in space using methanol, the simplest form of alcohol. Their results, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, give astronomers a new way of investigating how massive stars are born.

Over the last half-century, many molecules have been discovered in space...