Page 14 - Submillimeter Array News Today

    “Without phosphorus there would be no thought,” observed Jacob Moleschott a 19th-century physiologist and philosopher. Phosphorus is one of the six main elements that make up the human body and an essential element for life as we know it for the creation of DNA, cell membranes, bones and teeth in humans, and even the microbiome of ocean-dwelling plankton–as a possible signature in the search for life in the cosmos. Unlike hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and calcium, phosphorus is...

 E-Mail IMAGE: U Mons primary star, an elderly yellow supergiant, has around twice the Suns mass but has billowed to 100 times the Suns size. Scientists know less about the companion, the... view more  Credit: Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR) Astronomers have painted their best picture yet of an RV Tauri variable, a rare type of stellar binary where two stars - one approaching the end of its life - orbit within a sprawling disk of dust. Their 130-yea...

  New research shows that during the early universe cosmic filaments ferried cold gas and embryonic, node-shaped galaxies to a dark matter halo, where it all clumped together to form massive galaxies. The larger the galaxy, the more cold gas it needs to coalesce and to grow from a source of cold molecular gases totaling as much as 100 billion times the mass of our sun. “Where,” asked University of Iowa astronomers in a new study, “did these early, super-sized galaxies get that much cold ...

ESOblog How data from ALMA was used to form a musical composition What the ALMA PILS survey is investigating How arts and sciences can benefit from collaborating together We are all familiar with the awe we experience when looking up at the stars. For many people, this sense of wonder leads to inspiration. Astronomers look up and are inspired to know more about the weird and wonderful objects in the night sky, while artists and musicians, like Vera Matenaar from the Tria...

ESO, European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere

Astronomers have taken the closest look ever at the giant black hole in the center of the Milky Way. By combining telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, and California, they detected structure at a tiny angular scale of 37 micro-arcseconds - the equivalent of a baseball seen on the surface of the moon, 240,000 miles distant. These observations are among the highest resolution ever done in astronomy. Using a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), a team of astronomers led by Doeleman...

 E-Mail Stars are born in dense clouds of molecular hydrogen gas that permeates interstellar space of most galaxies. While the physics of star formation is complex, recent years have seen substantial progress towards understanding how stars form in a galactic environment. What ultimately determines the level of star formation in galaxies, however, remains an open question. In principle, two main factors influence the star formation activity: The amount of molecular gas that is present in galax...