The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS), using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has produced the sharpest images ever of 24 debris disks, the dusty belts left after planets finish forming. These disks are the cosmic equivalent of the teenage years for planetary systems—somewhat more mature than newborn, planet-forming disks, but not yet settled into adulthood.
New radio images from the the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array trace a pair of powerful plasma jets launched by galaxy VV 340a’s central supermassive black hole, which appear to be driving hot coronal gas out of the galaxy and shutting down future star formation.
Astronomers using the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array have revealed a dense cocoon of gas around one of the most extreme cosmic explosions ever seen, showing that a ravenous black hole ripped apart a massive star and then lit up its surroundings with powerful X-rays.
Peering back in time, around 12 billion years, astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found the most distant and direct evidence of scorching gas in a forming galaxy cluster, SPT2349-56. The hot plasma, seen when the Universe was just 1.4 billion years old, is far hotter and more pressurized than current theories predicted for such an early system.