Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have discovered a fast-moving jet of material propelled outward from a type of neutron star previously thought incapable of launching such a jet. The discovery, the scientists said, requires them to fundamentally revise their ideas about how such jets...
Synopsis: Astronomers using ALMA, with the aid of a gravitational lens, have detected the most-distant galactic “wind” of molecules ever observed, seen when the universe was only one billion years old. By tracing the outflow of hydroxyl (OH) molecules – which herald the presence of star-forming gas in galaxies – the researchers show how some...
Precise measurement using a continent-wide collection of National Science Foundation (NSF) radio telescopes has revealed that a narrow jet of particles moving at nearly the speed of light broke out into interstellar space after a pair of neutron stars merged in a galaxy 130 million light-years from Earth. The merger, which occurred in August of...
Summary: Astronomers have made the first definitive detection of a radioactive molecule in interstellar space: a form, or isotopologue of aluminum monofluoride (26AlF). The new data – made with ALMA and the NOEMA radio telescopes – reveal that this radioactive isotopologue was ejected into space by the collision of two stars, a tremendously rare...