Latest news with #AtacamaLargeMillimeter
Time of India
3 days ago
- Science
- Time of India
First time astronomers capture earliest signs of planet formation around a young star
Source: European Southern Observatory In a pioneering discovery for astronomy, scientists have captured the very first signs of planet formation around a young star, offering an unprecedented look at how planetary systems like our own might begin. Using two of the world's most powerful space observatories, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) in Chile; researchers observed a distant, infant star known as HOPS-315 , located about 1,300 light-years away in the Orion constellation. This discovery doesn't just tell us more about the universe; it offers a time machine-like glimpse into how our own solar system may have formed around 4.6 billion years ago. What is HOPS-315, and why is it key to understanding planet birth HOPS-315 is what astronomers call a protostar—a very young star still in the early stages of development. It's surrounded by a dense envelope of gas and dust that hasn't yet been fully absorbed or cleared away. As gravity causes this material to collapse and rotate, it flattens into a disk around the star. This is known as a protoplanetary disk , and it's from this swirling structure that planets eventually form. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like A fascinating fantasy game! Sea of Conquest Play Now Undo Utilizing the combined power of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's ALMA facility in Chile, scientists focused on HOPS-315, a young protostar located about 1,370 light-years away. Though similar in type to our sun, HOPS-315 is far younger, only 100,000 to 200,000 years old. What makes HOPS-315 truly special is that it represents the earliest stage of planet formation ever directly observed outside our solar system. Until now, astronomers have mostly seen young stars with already-formed or forming planets. This is the first time they've captured the exact moment when dust begins turning into the solid building blocks of planets. 'This is the first time we've identified when planet formation actually begins around another star,' said Melissa McClure, the study's lead author from Leiden University. How do new planets form from gas and dust around young stars? Zoom into the baby star HOPS-315 The journey of a planet starts in the dusty remains of a newborn star. When a star forms from collapsing clouds of gas and dust in space, the leftover material forms a spinning disk. Inside this disk, temperatures vary, with the hottest regions closest to the star. In these hot zones, gaseous elements begin to cool and condense into tiny solid crystals, a process known as mineral condensation. These crystals then clump together over time to form planetesimals, the mile-wide 'seeds' that eventually grow into full-fledged planets. By observing HOPS-315, researchers were able to detect signs of this very process. They found silicon monoxide gas and crystals, key indicators that mineral condensation had just begun—marking the starting point of planet formation. What meteorites reveal about early planet formation in our solar system The clues about how planets form don't just come from distant stars—they also come from right here on Earth. Meteorites, the rocky fragments that fall to Earth from space, are essentially fossils from the early solar system . Many of these space rocks are believed to have formed at the same time as Earth and the other planets. Inside them, scientists have discovered high-temperature crystalline minerals like those now being seen around HOPS-315. 'These crystals are like time capsules,' explained Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan. 'They let us match what we see around distant stars with the history of our own solar system.' How this discovery mirrors the formation of our own solar system What's particularly striking about the new observations is that the crystalline materials around HOPS-315 were found at a distance from the star similar to where our solar system's asteroid belt is located in relation to the sun. This similarity suggests that the conditions under which planetesimals form may follow consistent patterns across the universe—even in star systems vastly different from our own. 'We're seeing these minerals in exactly the same region we'd expect based on our solar system,' said Logan Francis, co-author and researcher at Leiden University. Why HOPS-315 is being called a baby photo of Earth's solar system This isn't just another distant star being studied; it's a direct window into the earliest moments of planetary evolution, one that mirrors the path our own Earth may have taken. Team member Merel van 't Hoff from Purdue University summed it up best: 'This system is like a baby photo of our solar system. It's one of the best examples we have to study how Earth, and everything else, first began.' By observing HOPS-315, astronomers haven't just captured the formation of a new planetary system; they may have also unlocked secrets about our own origins. As telescopes grow more powerful, we're getting closer than ever to understanding the cosmic recipe that made Earth and life as we know it possible. Also Read: Shubhanshu Shukla's emotional reunion with family melts millions of hearts online | Watch first pictures
CNN
20-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Oxygen detected in the most distant galaxy ever found
Summary Astronomers have discovered oxygen and heavy metals in galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0, the most distant galaxy ever found at 13.4 billion light-years away. The presence of these elements suggests galaxies formed much faster than expected in the early universe. Researchers described the unexpectedly mature galaxy as "like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies," according to study author Sander Schouws. The galaxy appears unusually large and bright and contains 10 times more heavy elements than expected. Scientists are using both the James Webb Space Telescope and ALMA observatory to investigate whether the galaxy and its rapid evolution are unique. Astronomers have made the surprising discovery of oxygen and elements like heavy metals in the most distant known galaxy. The galaxy is 13.4 billion light-years away, meaning it formed in the early days of the universe. Astronomers believe the big bang created the universe 13.8 billion years ago. The unusually large, luminous distant galaxy, called JADES-GS-z14-0, was initially detected in January 2024 using the James Webb Space Telescope, which observes the universe in infrared light that's invisible to the human eye. The space observatory can effectively peer back in time to the beginning of a mysterious era called Cosmic Dawn, or the first few hundred million years after the big bang when the first galaxies were born, because it can observe light that has traveled for billions of years across space to Earth. Light from JADES-GS-z14-0 has taken 13.4 billion years to reach our corner of the universe, so Webb and other observatories such as ALMA, or the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile's Atacama Desert, are seeing the galaxy as it was when the universe was only about 300 million years old. When astronomers used ALMA to follow up on Webb's initial observations, they were stunned to find the presence of oxygen and heavy metals because their presence suggests that galaxies formed more quickly than expected in the early days of the universe. The results of the ALMA detections were published Thursday in separate studies in The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy & Astrophysics. 'It is like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies,' said Sander Schouws, lead author of The Astrophysical Journal study and a doctoral candidate at Leiden Observatory at Leiden University in the Netherlands, in a statement. 'The results show the galaxy has formed very rapidly and is also maturing rapidly, adding to a growing body of evidence that the formation of galaxies happens much faster than was expected.' The fact that JADES-GS-z14-0 was laden with heavy elements is causing astronomers to question what some of the earliest galaxies were really like — as well as how many more they may find using Webb and ALMA. A bright light leads to a surprise Multiple aspects of JADES-GS-z14-0, including its large size and brightness, have proved to be unexpected. As Webb surveyed 700 distant galaxies, this one turned out to be the third brightest despite it being the farthest, Schouws said. But the oldest galaxies are expected to be smaller and dimmer because the universe was much smaller at the time. 'In general, galaxies this early in the universe are very different from the famous galaxies we know from the beautiful images of Hubble and JWST,' Schouws said in an email. 'They are a lot more compact, rich in gas and messy/disordered. The conditions are more extreme because a lot of stars are forming rapidly in a small volume.' Galaxies typically begin from huge gas clouds that collapse and rotate, filling with young stars that are largely made of light elements such as helium and hydrogen. As stars evolve over time, they create heavier elements such as oxygen and metals, which disperse throughout the galaxy as stars explode at the end of their lifetime. In turn, the elements released by dying stars lead to the formation of more stars as well as the planets that orbit them. But nothing about JADES-GS-z14-0 fits that model. Instead, the galaxy contains 10 times more heavy elements than expected, the study authors said. 'Such elements are produced by massive stars and the large amount of oxygen suggests that several generations of massive stars were already born and died,' said Carniani, assistant professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy, and lead author of the Astronomy & Astrophysics study, in a statement. 'In conclusion (JADES-GS-z14-0) is more mature than expected and these results imply that the first generation of galaxies assembled their mass very quickly.' Going the distance Using ALMA also enabled the researchers to confirm the distance of the galaxy, originally measured using Webb, and refine their measurements. Together, both telescopes can be used to study the formation and evolution of the first galaxies, said Rychard Bouwens, associate professor at Leiden University and coauthor of the study in The Astrophysical Journal. 'I was really surprised by this clear detection of oxygen in JADES-GS-z14-0,' said Gergö Popping, a European Southern Observatory astronomer at the European ALMA Regional Centre, in a statement. Popping did not participate in either study. 'It suggests galaxies can form more rapidly after the Big Bang than had previously been thought. This result showcases the important role ALMA plays in unraveling the conditions under which the first galaxies in our Universe formed.' While Webb can help identify extremely distant galaxies, ALMA can zoom in to study the gas and dust within them by detecting the far-infrared light they emit, Carniani said. Studying such galaxies can help shed light on the many remaining mysteries of Cosmic Dawn, such as what occurred shortly after the universe first began and the identities of the first celestial objects to appear. The study authors believe the early galaxies may have formed more stars, and stars on a more massive scale, than expected, which would also affect the brightness of the galaxy overall. 'It's like burning candles: you can have candles with a wide wick that have a bright flame (massive stars) or you can have candles that burn slow and efficient (normal stars),' Schouws said. But more observations are needed to understand exactly what the researchers are seeing, he said. The team wants to determine whether the galaxy and its rapid evolution are truly unique, or if there are more like it in the early universe since a single celestial object is not enough to establish a new model of galaxy formation, Carniani said.
CNN
20-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Oxygen detected in the most distant galaxy ever found
Astronomers have made the surprising discovery of oxygen and elements like heavy metals in the most distant known galaxy. The galaxy is 13.4 billion light-years away, meaning it formed in the early days of the universe. Astronomers believe the big bang created the universe 13.8 billion years ago. The unusually large, luminous distant galaxy, called JADES-GS-z14-0, was initially detected in January 2024 using the James Webb Space Telescope, which observes the universe in infrared light that's invisible to the human eye. The space observatory can effectively peer back in time to the beginning of a mysterious era called Cosmic Dawn, or the first few hundred million years after the big bang when the first galaxies were born, because it can observe light that has traveled for billions of years across space to Earth. Light from JADES-GS-z14-0 has taken 13.4 billion years to reach our corner of the universe, so Webb and other observatories such as ALMA, or the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile's Atacama Desert, are seeing the galaxy as it was when the universe was only about 300 million years old. When astronomers used ALMA to follow up on Webb's initial observations, they were stunned to find the presence of oxygen and heavy metals because their presence suggests that galaxies formed more quickly than expected in the early days of the universe. The results of the ALMA detections were published Thursday in separate studies in The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy & Astrophysics. 'It is like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies,' said Sander Schouws, lead author of The Astrophysical Journal study and a doctoral candidate at Leiden Observatory at Leiden University in the Netherlands, in a statement. 'The results show the galaxy has formed very rapidly and is also maturing rapidly, adding to a growing body of evidence that the formation of galaxies happens much faster than was expected.' The fact that JADES-GS-z14-0 was laden with heavy elements is causing astronomers to question what some of the earliest galaxies were really like — as well as how many more they may find using Webb and ALMA. A bright light leads to a surprise Multiple aspects of JADES-GS-z14-0, including its large size and brightness, have proved to be unexpected. As Webb surveyed 700 distant galaxies, this one turned out to be the third brightest despite it being the farthest, Schouws said. But the oldest galaxies are expected to be smaller and dimmer because the universe was much smaller at the time. 'In general, galaxies this early in the universe are very different from the famous galaxies we know from the beautiful images of Hubble and JWST,' Schouws said in an email. 'They are a lot more compact, rich in gas and messy/disordered. The conditions are more extreme because a lot of stars are forming rapidly in a small volume.' Galaxies typically begin from huge gas clouds that collapse and rotate, filling with young stars that are largely made of light elements such as helium and hydrogen. As stars evolve over time, they create heavier elements such as oxygen and metals, which disperse throughout the galaxy as stars explode at the end of their lifetime. In turn, the elements released by dying stars lead to the formation of more stars as well as the planets that orbit them. But nothing about JADES-GS-z14-0 fits that model. Instead, the galaxy contains 10 times more heavy elements than expected, the study authors said. 'Such elements are produced by massive stars and the large amount of oxygen suggests that several generations of massive stars were already born and died,' said Carniani, assistant professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy, and lead author of the Astronomy & Astrophysics study, in a statement. 'In conclusion (JADES-GS-z14-0) is more mature than expected and these results imply that the first generation of galaxies assembled their mass very quickly.' Going the distance Using ALMA also enabled the researchers to confirm the distance of the galaxy, originally measured using Webb, and refine their measurements. Together, both telescopes can be used to study the formation and evolution of the first galaxies, said Rychard Bouwens, associate professor at Leiden University and coauthor of the study in The Astrophysical Journal. 'I was really surprised by this clear detection of oxygen in JADES-GS-z14-0,' said Gergö Popping, a European Southern Observatory astronomer at the European ALMA Regional Centre, in a statement. Popping did not participate in either study. 'It suggests galaxies can form more rapidly after the Big Bang than had previously been thought. This result showcases the important role ALMA plays in unraveling the conditions under which the first galaxies in our Universe formed.' While Webb can help identify extremely distant galaxies, ALMA can zoom in to study the gas and dust within them by detecting the far-infrared light they emit, Carniani said. Studying such galaxies can help shed light on the many remaining mysteries of Cosmic Dawn, such as what occurred shortly after the universe first began and the identities of the first celestial objects to appear. The study authors believe the early galaxies may have formed more stars, and stars on a more massive scale, than expected, which would also affect the brightness of the galaxy overall. 'It's like burning candles: you can have candles with a wide wick that have a bright flame (massive stars) or you can have candles that burn slow and efficient (normal stars),' Schouws said. But more observations are needed to understand exactly what the researchers are seeing, he said. The team wants to determine whether the galaxy and its rapid evolution are truly unique, or if there are more like it in the early universe since a single celestial object is not enough to establish a new model of galaxy formation, Carniani said.
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
This butterfly-shaped nebula owes its structure to 2 chaotic young stars
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A huge bipolar outflow of gas and dust, grown from the tumultuous birth of a double-star system, has formed a cosmic hourglass — and the James Webb Space Telescope imaged the scene in splendiferous detail. Referred to as Lynds 483, or LBN 483,, this nebulous outflow is located about 650 light years away. It provides an ideal opportunity for the James Webb Space Telescope to learn more about the process of star formation. (Beverly Lynds was an astronomer who catalogued both bright nebulas – BN – and dark nebulas – DN – in the 1960s) How does the birth of stars form a nebula like this? Well, stars grow by accreting material from their immediate environs of a gravitationally collapsed cloud of molecular gas. Yet, paradoxically, they are able to spit some material back out in fast, narrow jets or wider but slower outflows. These jets and outflows clash with gas and dust in the surroundings, creating nebulas like LBN 483. The jets are formed by material with a rich abundance of varied molecules falling onto young protostars. In the case of LBN 483, there's not one but two protostars, the main star having a lower mass companion that was only discovered as recently as 2022 by a team led by Erin Cox of Northwestern University using ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile. The fact that there are two stars lurking at the heart of this butterfly-shaped nebula will be crucial, as we shall see. We can't see those two protostars in the JWST's Near-Infrared Camera image — they are far too small on the scale of this image — but if we could imagine zooming in right to the heart of the nebula, between its two lobes, or "wings," we would find the two stars snugly ensconced within a dense, doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust. This cloud is supplemented with material from the gaseous, butterfly-shaped nebula beyond; the stars grow from material that accretes onto them from the dusty doughnut. The jets and outflows are not constant but rather occur in bursts, responding to periods when the baby stars are overfed and belch out some of their accreted material. Magnetic fields play a crucial role here, directing these outflows of charged particles. In LBN 483, the JWST is witnessing where these jets and outflows are colliding with both the surrounding nebulous womb but also earlier ejected material. As the outflows crash into the surrounding material, intricate shapes are formed. The fresh outflow plows through and responds to the density of the material its are encountering. The whole scene is illuminated by the light of the burgeoning stars themselves, shining up and down through the holes of their dusty donuts, hence why we see the V-shaped bright lobes and dark areas between them where light is blocked by the torus. The JWST has picked out intricate details in LBN 483's lobes, namely the aforementioned twists and crumples. The bright orange arc is a shock-front where an outflow is currently crashing into surrounding material. We can also see what look like pillars, colored light purple here (this is all false color, meant to represent different infrared wavelengths) and pointing away from the two stars. These pillars are denser clumps of gas and dust that the outflows haven't yet managed to erode, like how the towering buttes in the western United States have remained resolute to wind and rain erosion. Observations by ALMA have detected polarized radio waves coming from the cold dust in the heart of the nebula — dust too cold for even JWST to detect. The polarization of these radio waves is caused by the orientation of the magnetic field that pervades LBN 483's inner sanctum. This magnetic field is parallel to the outflows that form LBN 483, but perpendicular to the inflow of material falling onto the two stars. Remember, it is the magnetic field that ultimately drives the outflows, so how it behaves is important for sculpting the shape of the nebula. The dust polarization reveals that about 93 billion miles (150 billion kilometers/1,000 astronomical units) from the stars (similar to the distance of Voyager 1 from our sun), the magnetic field has a distinct 45-degree counter-clockwise kink. This may have an effect on how the outflows shape LBN 483. This twist is a result of the movements of the growing stars. Currently, the two protostars are separated by 34 astronomical units (3.2 billion miles/5.1 billion kilometers), which is just a little farther than Neptune is from our sun. However, the leading hypothesis suggests that the two stars were born farther apart, and then one migrated closer to the other. This likely altered the distribution of angular momentum (the momentum of orbiting bodies) in the young system. Like energy, momentum has to be conserved, so the excess angular momentum would have been dumped into the magnetic field that is carried by the outflows in the same way that our sun's magnetic field is carried by the solar wind, causing the magnetic field to twist. Studying young systems like the one powering LBN 483 is vital for learning more about how stars form, beginning with a giant cloud of molecular gas that becomes destabilized, undergoes gravitational collapse and fragments into clumps, each clump being the womb of a new star system. LBN 483 is particularly interesting in that it does not seem to be part of a larger star-forming region like the Orion Nebula, and so as an isolated spot of starbirth it may operate on slightly different rules to those huge stellar nurseries. Related Stories: — Is our universe trapped inside a black hole? This James Webb Space Telescope discovery might blow your mind — This astronomer found a sneaky extra star in James Webb Space Telescope data — James Webb Space Telescope investigates the origins of 'failed stars' in the Flame Nebula By studying the shape of LBN 483 and the way that shape arises from outflows emanating from the protostars, and plugging those details into numerical simulations of star formation so that they can replicate what the JWST sees, astronomers can revise their models of star formation and better understand not only how all the stars in the night sky formed, but also the events that resulted in the birth of our own sun 4.6 billion years ago. Who knows, perhaps 4.6 billion years ago, alien astronomers were watching our own sun form. And in another 4.6 billion years, the inhabitants of the binary system currently sitting snugly within LBN 483 could be doing the same thing, while at the same time watching the protracted death of our sun. These astronomers would be separated by billions of years, but connected by the immense longevity of the stars around them.
