ALMA tagged posts

Scientists find Elusive Gas from Post-Starburst Galaxies Hiding in Plain Sight

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Post-starburst galaxies were previously thought to scatter all of their gas and dust — the fuel required for creating new stars — in violent bursts of energy, and with extraordinary speed. Now, new data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveals that these galaxies don’t scatter all of their star-forming fuel after all. Instead, after their supposed end, these dormant galaxies hold onto and compress large amounts of highly-concentrated, turbulent gas. But contrary to expectation, they’re not using it to form stars.

In most galaxies, scientists expect gas to be distributed in a way similar to starlight. But for post-starburst galaxies, or PSBs, this isn’t the case...

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Scientists observe Mysterious Death of a Star Emitting Six Rings

A rendering of the star V Hydrae, or V Hya for short. In its death throes, the star has emitted a series of expanding rings that scientists calculated are being formed every few hundred years, said Mark Morris, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy.

Astrophysicists studying in unprecedented detail a red giant star named V Hydrae — abbreviated as V Hya — have witnessed the star’s mysterious death throes.

Researchers from UCLA and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered that the carbon-rich star has expelled six slowly expanding molecular rings and an hourglass-shaped structure ejecting matter out into space at high speeds, signaling that the star is undergoing rapid evolution as it ends its life in a blaze of glory before shutting down its energy production.

“This is the f...

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Cosmic History can explain the Properties of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars

This is the sharpest image ever taken by ALMA — sharper than is routinely achieved in visible light with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star HL Tauri. These new ALMA observations reveal substructures within the disc that have never been seen before and even show the possible positions of planets forming in the dark patches within the system. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Astronomers have managed to link the properties of the inner planets of our solar system with our cosmic history: with the emergence of ring structures in the swirling disk of gas and dust in which these planets were formed...

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Simulations provide Clue to Missing Planets Mystery

Simulations provide clue to missing planets mystery
A protoplanetary disk as observed by ALMA (left), and a protoplanetary disk during planetary migration, as obtained from the ATERUI II simulation (right). The dashed line in the simulation represents the orbit of a planet, and the gray area indicates a region not covered by the computational domain of the simulation. Credit: Kazuhiro Kanagawa, ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Forming planets are one possible explanation for the rings and gaps observed in disks of gas and dust around young stars. But this theory has trouble explaining why it is rare to find planets associated with rings. New supercomputer simulations show that after creating a ring, a planet can move away and leave the ring behind...

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