A study led by Paolo Padoan, ICREA research professor at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), is challenging the understanding of planetary disk formation around young stars.
The paper, published in Nature Astronomy, reveals that the environment plays a crucial role in determining the size and lifetime of these planetary disks, which are the sites of planet formation.
When a star forms, it is surrounded by a spinning disk of gas and dust...
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March 21, 2025,
Astronomy/Space
Two different teams of astronomers have detected oxygen in the most distant known galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0. The discovery, reported in two separate studies, was made possible thanks to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. This record-breaking detection is making astronomers rethink how quickly galaxies formed in the early universe.
Discovered last year, JADES-GS-z14-0 is the most distant confirmed galaxy ever found: it is so far away, its light took 13.4 billion years to reach us, meaning we see it as it was when the universe was less than 300 million years old, about 2% of its present age.
The new oxygen detection with ALMA, a telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert, suggests the galaxy is much m...
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January 22, 2025,
Astronomy/Space
An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new compact galaxy group using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The new group, designated CGG-z4, hosts two optically dark star-forming galaxies. The finding was detailed in a research paper published on the pre-print server arXiv.
Galaxy groups are the smallest aggrega...
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December 16, 2024,
Astronomy/Space
New radio astronomy observations of a planetary system in the process of forming show that once the first planets form close to the central star, these planets can help shepherd the material to form new planets farther out. In this way each planet helps to form the next, like a line of falling dominos each triggering the next in turn.
To date over 5000 planetary systems have been identified. More than 1000 of those systems have been confirmed to host multiple planets. Planets form in clouds of gas and dust known as protoplanetary disks around young stars. But the formation process of multi-planet systems, like our own Solar System, is still poorly understood.
The best example object to study multi-planet system formation is a young star known as PDS 70, located 367 light years a...
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