Double death explains universe's coldest spot

• Autores: Shannon Hall
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3119, 2017, pág. 9
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The coldest place in the universe marks the grave of two stars. So says a team that trained the ALMA telescope on the spot, known as the Boomerang Nebula. Wouter Vlemmings and Raghvendra Sahal at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory turned ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, towards the chilly nebula. ALMA's high resolution let the team probe the frigid heart of the system as well. It turns out that within the shell of gas two smaller bubbles are expanding outward from the central star. The team suggests that the single star was actually two, with one much larger than the other. When the massive star died and started to swell, it swallowed the smaller one. The companion continued to orbit the primary star's core within the shell of gas. Eventually, it spiraled into the core roughly 1,000 years ago in a violent merger that disgorged the two smaller lobes of gas.