Sugars are key biomolecules in living organisms, as they form the backbone of DNA and RNA and play a fundamental role in metabolic processes. In theories of the origin of life, sugars are also essential for the synthesis ...
Astronomy
Jul 13, 2026
0
244
Where would you go to watch a star being born? Probably not the heart of the Milky Way, which is about the most violent neighborhood our galaxy has to offer, a maelstrom of gas churning so fast and so chaotically that you ...
Astronomy
Jul 5, 2026
0
60
Stars form when vast clouds of cold gas in space collapse under their own gravity. But not all gas collapses, and not all clouds form stars equally efficiently. A longstanding puzzle in astrophysics is what controls this ...
Astronomy
Jun 22, 2026
1
32
The space between stars may seem like a barren desert, but over the past few decades scientists have been finding all sorts of interesting chemicals in it. From the precursors to proteins to the building blocks of cell membranes, ...
Astronomy
Jun 10, 2026
0
36
For this NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month, we return to the constellation Orion (the Hunter), a location familiar to Webb. This area of the sky is replete with star-forming clouds that make up ...
Astronomy
Jun 5, 2026
0
39
The universe is full of fascinating structures, and some of the most striking take shape inside the giant clouds where stars are born. There, streams of gas appear to converge from all directions toward a dense central hub, ...
Astronomy
May 28, 2026
0
18
An international team of astronomers has analyzed the data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to investigate giant molecular clouds in nearby galaxies. The new ...
An international team of astronomers has employed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to perform high-resolution observations of the Needle galaxy. Results of the new observational campaign, presented ...
Using the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), astronomers have observed a nearby young open cluster known as NGC 1647. Results of the new observations, presented in a paper published April ...
NASA's SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) mission has mapped interstellar ice at an unprecedented scale. Covering regions in our Milky Way galaxy more than ...
Astronomy
Apr 15, 2026
0
43
