Spider galaxies guzzle gas from the cosmic web

• Autores: Joshua Sokol
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3038, 2015, pág. 14
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Simulations suggest that as the gas clouds fall into the gravitational clutches of a galaxy, they spark bursts of star formation. But the process has been hard to observe in practice. Most galaxies near the Earth and Milky Way are filled with hot gas that warns approaching material, preventing it from collapsing into stars. And because clumps of cold gas in intergalactic space don't emit much light, they are hard to spot. The clincher would be to watch a blob of fresh gas triggering a burst of star formation in a small galaxy that's not building many stars on its own. Now a team led by Jorge Sanchez Almeida of the Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands in Spain has done just that.