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    Unexpected Chemistry reveals Cosmic Star Factories´ Secrets

    December 17, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    Galaxy illustration with molecules
    Light from many different molecules reveals the secrets of distant star factories. This illustration shows the many molecules found in the quasar APM 08279+5255, together with a Hubble telescope image of a similar galaxy in the nearby universe, IC 5063, which also has an active supermassive black hole at its centre. Background image credits: NASA, ESA & W. P. Maksym (CfA); Jmol (molecules); R. Cumming (montage)Photographer: NASA, ESA & W. P. Maksym (CfA); Jmol (molecules); R. Cumming (montage)

    Two galaxies in the early universe, which contain extremely productive star factories, have been studied by a team of scientists led by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden...

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    Quasar discovery sets New Distance record

    January 14, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Physics

    Artist’s conception of the quasar J0313–1806, seen as it was only 670 million years after the Big Bang.
    Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva

    An international team of astronomers has discovered the most distant quasar yet found — a cosmic monster more than 13 billion light-years from Earth powered by a supermassive black hole more than 1.6 billion times more massive than the Sun and more than 1,000 times brighter than our entire Milky Way Galaxy.

    The quasar, called J0313-1806, is seen as it was when the Universe was only 670 million years old and is providing astronomers with valuable insight on how massive galaxies — and the supermassive black holes at their cores — formed in the early Universe...

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    Fossil from the Big Bang discovered with W. M. Keck Observatory

    December 20, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    Within the gas in the (blue) filaments connecting the (orange) galaxies lurk rare pockets of pristine gas — vestiges of the Big Bang that have somehow been orphaned from the explosive, polluting deaths of stars, seen here as circular shock waves around some orange points.
    Credit: TNG COLLABORATION

    Rare relic is one of only three fossil clouds known in the universe. A relic cloud of gas, orphaned after the Big Bang, has been discovered in the distant universe by astronomers using the world’s most powerful optical telescope, the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii.

    The discovery of such a rare fossil, led by PhD student Fred Robert and Professor Michael Murphy at Swinburne University of Technology, offers new information about how the first galaxies in the universe formed...

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    Astronomers find Fastest-Growing Black Hole known in Space

    May 17, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Computer-simulated image of a supermassive black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI) [link]

    Computer-simulated image of a supermassive black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI) [link]

    Astronomers at ANU have found the fastest-growing black hole known in the Universe, describing it as a monster that devours a mass equivalent to our sun every two days. The astronomers have looked back more than 12 billion years to the early dark ages of the Universe, when this supermassive black hole was estimated to be the size of about 20 billion suns with a 1% growth rate every one million years.

    “This black hole is growing so rapidly that it’s shining thousands of times more brightly than an entire galaxy, due to all of the gases it sucks in daily that cause lots of friction and heat,” said Dr Wolf from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophys...

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