Dying stars could seed interstellar medium with carbon nanotubes

Evidence suggests that carbon nanotubes, tiny tubes consisting of pure carbon, could be forged in the envelopes of dust and gas surrounding dying stars. The findings propose a simple, yet elegant mechanism for the formation ...

Studying a Star Before it is Born

(PhysOrg.com) -- The first phase of a star's formation are thought to begin deep inside a natal cloud of gas and dust. In the earliest stages, material coalesces under the influence of gravity into so-called "dense cores," ...

ALMA turns its eyes to Centaurus A

(Phys.org) -- A new image of the galaxy Centaurus A, made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), shows how the observatory allows astronomers to see through the opaque dust lanes that obscure the galaxy's ...

Soccer balls in interstellar space

An international team of astronomers led by Masaaki Otsuka (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics or ASIAA) has detected the C60 fullerene (molecules of carbon with 60 atoms arranged in patterns resembling ...

Sea star listed as critically endangered following research

The iconic sunflower sea star has been listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature following a groundbreaking population study led by Oregon State University and The Nature Conservancy.

Want to find life? Compare a planet to its neighbors

With thousands of known exoplanets and tens of thousands likely to be discovered in the coming decades, it could be only a matter of time before we discover a planet with life. The trick is proving it. So far the focus has ...

JWST probes chemistry around a newborn star

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is set to transform astronomers' understanding of the chemistry of newly formed stars, with an analysis by RIKEN researchers of early results showing that it can detect complex organic ...

Atmosphere models seek clues for rocky exoplanets

When a distant planet appears as a point of light in a telescope, it's hard to imagine what things are like at the surface. Does rain fall? Is the atmosphere thick, or dissipating into space? How constant is the sunlight ...

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