Science

Judi Lynn

(160,601 posts) Wed Jul 24, 2013, 02:26 PM Jul 2013

Fast and Furious: Violent Short-Lived Stars Stunt Galaxy Growth

Fast and Furious: Violent Short-Lived Stars Stunt Galaxy Growth

by Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com Contributor | July 24, 2013 01:01pm ET

New observations by a powerful telescope in Chile have revealed clues into why some galaxies experience a frenetic period of rapid star birth, only to see those stellar newborns starve future generations of stars.

Scientists studying the artfully named Sculptor Galaxy found that as its stars are born and die, they blow away the rich gas material needed to create more stars, blasting it out of the galaxy, possibly forever.

Astronomers have studied the Sculptor Galaxy, also known as NGC 253, and other productive galaxies, known as starburst galaxies, for nearly a decade. But until the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) came on line in Chile, they lacked the capability to survey the hard-to-see cold gas that made up most of the mass of the galactic winds.

"Sometimes it is easy to see a faint object if it is by itself, but much harder if it is in the midst of a complex background," lead author Alberto Bolatto of the University of Maryland in College Park told SPACE.com by email.

- See more at: http://www.space.com/22092-violent-star-birth-stunts-galaxy-growth.html#sthash.m6esWHet.dpuf

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Fast and Furious: Violent Short-Lived Stars Stunt Galaxy Growth (Original Post) Judi Lynn Jul 2013 OP

Starburst to Star Bust: Light Shed On Mystery of Missing Massive Galaxies Judi Lynn Jul 2013 #1

Judi Lynn

(160,601 posts)

1. Starburst to Star Bust: Light Shed On Mystery of Missing Massive Galaxies

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Thu Jul 25, 2013, 03:16 PM

Jul 2013

Starburst to Star Bust: Light Shed On Mystery of Missing Massive Galaxies

July 24, 2013 — New observations from the ALMA telescope in Chile have given astronomers the best view yet of how vigorous star formation can blast gas out of a galaxy and starve future generations of stars of the fuel they need to form and grow. The dramatic images show enormous outflows of molecular gas ejected by star-forming regions in the nearby Sculptor Galaxy. These new results help to explain the strange paucity of very massive galaxies in the Universe.

The study is published in the journal Nature on July 25, 2013.

Galaxies -- systems like our own Milky Way that contain up to hundreds of billions of stars -- are the basic building blocks of the cosmos. One ambitious goal of contemporary astronomy is to understand the ways in which galaxies grow and evolve, a key question being star formation: what determines the number of new stars that will form in a galaxy?

The Sculptor Galaxy, also known as NGC 253, is a spiral galaxy located in the southern constellation of Sculptor. At a distance of around 11.5 million light-years from our Solar System it is one of our closer intergalactic neighbours, and one of the closest starburst galaxies [1] visible from the southern hemisphere. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) astronomers have discovered billowing columns of cold, dense gas fleeing from the centre of the galactic disc.

"With ALMA's superb resolution and sensitivity, we can clearly see for the first time massive concentrations of cold gas being jettisoned by expanding shells of intense pressure created by young stars," said Alberto Bolatto of the University of Maryland, USA lead author of the paper. "The amount of gas we measure gives us very good evidence that some growing galaxies spew out more gas than they take in. We may be seeing a present-day example of a very common occurrence in the early Universe."

More:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130724133032.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

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