Before its construction is even completed, the new telescope ALMA — the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array — is embarking on an upgrade that will help astronomers investigate the earliest galaxies and search for water in other planetary systems. The oversight board for ALMA has authorised the design and building of an additional set of [continue reading]
Astronomers at Arizona State University have found an exceptionally distant galaxy, ranked among the top 10 most distant objects currently known in space. Light from the recently detected galaxy left the object about 800 million years after the beginning of the universe, when the universe was in its infancy. False color image of the [continue reading]
This artist’s concept shows what the very early universe might have looked like, just after its first stars began bursting onto the scene. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC)) Recently, astronomers found two immense clouds of pristine gas, nearly 12 billion light years away — clouds that astronomers suspect are the stuff from which the first stars [continue reading]