Roughly half of the newly-discovered black holes are not at the centers of their galaxies Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF Astronomers seeking to learn about the mechanisms that formed massive black holes in the early history of the Universe have gained important new clues with the discovery of 13 such black holes in dwarf galaxies less than...
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have spotted the light of a massive galaxy seen only 970 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy, called MAMBO-9, is the most distant dusty star-forming galaxy that has ever been observed without the help of a gravitational lens . Dusty star-forming galaxies are the...
Astronomers Find First Example of Furious Star Formation at Core of a Galaxy Cluster Hot gas, radio jets, and star formation in a galaxy cluster Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/M.McDonald et al; Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF; Optical: NASA/STScI. Astronomers have confirmed the first example of a galaxy cluster where large numbers of stars are being born at its...
** Synopsis: For the first time, astronomers using ALMA have witnessed 3D motions of gas in a planet-forming disk. At three locations in the disk around a young star called HD 163296, gas is flowing like a waterfall into gaps that are most likely caused by planets in formation. These gas flows have long been predicted and would directly influence...