ALMA tagged posts

These ancient quasars shouldn’t exist so soon after the Big Bang

An artist's concept of a distant galaxy with an active quasar at its center shooting out bright jets of radiation above and below the galactic disc.
Photo Credit
NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

Scientists have found the oldest quasars ever seen, revealing giant black holes blazing across the universe when it was only 670 million years old. Astronomers have uncovered 31 of the oldest known quasars, including the two earliest ever detected, shining from a time when the universe was only about 670 million years old. Powered by supermassive black holes billions of times the Sun’s mass, these incredibly bright objects challenge scientists’ understanding of how such enormous black holes formed so quickly after the Big Bang.

Quasars rank among the brightest and most powerful objects in the universe...

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Two blazing quasars caught waltzing into a merger

Two blazing quasars caught waltzing into a merger
Artist’s concept of two quasars in the process of merging. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick

Astronomers, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), have confirmed the existence of a close quasar pair housed in a pair of merging galaxies seen when the universe was less than a billion years old, at a redshift of 5.7. The system, designated J2037–4537, is one of only two confirmed quasar pairs at redshift greater than 5 ever found. A paper outlining this work was submitted to the preprint server arXiv on April 7.

Quasars are among the most luminous objects in the universe. They belong to the family of active galactic nuclei (AGN)—galaxies that are powered by supermassive black holes at their centers...

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3I/ATLAS contains 30 times more semi-heavy water than comets in our solar system

This artist’s impression compares the semi-heavy water content of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS (left) and Earth (right). Insets illustrate the relative abundance of deuterated water (HDO) molecules, showing that 3I/ATLAS contains over 30 times more HDO than is found in Earth’s oceans. This elevated ratio suggests the comet formed in an extremely cold environment, very different from the conditions that shaped our Solar System.
Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/M.Weiss

New observations of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS include the first measurement of the abundance of deuterated water relative to ordinary water in an interstellar object...

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ALMA and JWST investigate giant disk galaxy’s formation and evolution

Astronomers investigate the formation and evolution of a giant disc galaxy
ALMA and JWST imaging of ADF22.1. Credit: arXiv (2026). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2604.07440

European astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a recently discovered giant disk galaxy known as ADF22.1. Results of the new observations, published April 8 on the arXiv preprint server, shed more light on the formation and evolution of this galaxy.

A unique laboratory
ADF22.1, also known as ADF22.A1, is a giant disk barred spiral galaxy residing in a protocluster known as SSA22 at a redshift of 3.09. It has an effective radius of some 22,800 light years and a stellar mass of about 100 billion solar masses...

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