SPACE: NEWS IN BRIEF

Credit: Hokkaido University

LIFE’S BUILDING BLOCKS MAY HAVE FORMED IN INTERSTELLAR CLOUDS

An experiment shows that one of the basic units of life, nucleobases, could have originated within giant gas clouds interspersed between the stars.

Credit: NAOJ Astronomers have detected a stealthy black hole from its effects on an interstellar gas cloud. This intermediate mass black hole is one of over 100 million quiet black holes expected to be lurking in our galaxy. These results provide a new method to search for other hidden black holes and help us understand the growth and evolution of black holes. Credit: EHT Collaboration Japanese researchers contributed to paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of distant galaxy Messier 87. One of the telescopes, ALMA, is operated through international collaboration between East Asia, Europe, and North America. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) developed the data transmission instrument for ALMA to deliver the massive data taken with the array to its base facility.

RIKEN, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Zhang et al. Credit:

SPIRALING GIANTS: WITNESSING THE BIRTH OF A MASSIVE BINARY STAR SYSTEM

Astronomers have found a molecular cloud that is collapsing to form two massive protostars that will eventually become a binary star system. This observation shows that binary stars form together.

HIDING BLACK HOLE FOUND

Credit: NAOJ

FUSION SCIENCE AND ASTRONOMY ENABLES INVESTIGATION OF THE ORIGIN OF HEAVY ELEMENTS

A team of experts in nuclear fusion and astronomy has computed high-accuracy atomic data for analyzing light from a kilonova, a birth place of heavy elements. They found that their new data set could predict kilonovae brightness with much better accuracy than before. This aids our understanding of the cosmic origins of heavy elements.

HOW ASIA HELPED CAPTURE FIRST IMAGE OF A BLACK HOLE

Credit: Yoshihiro Furukawa

SUGAR DELIVERED TO EARTH FROM SPACE

A new study has discovered meteorites containing RNA sugar, ribose, and other bio-important sugars, the first direct evidence of bio-essential sugars' delivery from space to the Earth.

Credit: ESO/A. Roquette

FIRST DETECTION OF GAMMA-RAY BURST AFTERGLOW IN VERY-HIGH-ENERGY GAMMA LIGHT

An international team of researchers have observed a gamma-ray burst, an extremely energetic flash following a cosmological cataclysm, emitting very-high-energy gammarays long after the initial explosion.

Credit: Kagoshima University

PLANETS AROUND A BLACK HOLE? CALCULATIONS SHOW POSSIBILITY OF BIZARRE WORLDS

Theoreticians in two different fields defied the common knowledge that planets orbit stars like the Sun. They proposed the possibility of thousands of planets around a supermassive black hole.

Credit: UNIST

ORIGINS OF ULTRA-HIGH-ENERGY COSMIC RAY HOTSPOT

Among many particles arriving from outer space, there are ones with the extremely high energy that travel at nearly the speed of light. A new study, based on measurements from the Telescope

Array experiment (pictured), suggests that those particles come from the filaments of galaxies connected to the Virgo Cluster.