Scientists discovered a hot and thick mass of complex molecules called a "stellar cocoon" in a close dwarf galaxy, the first spotted outside our galaxy.
The team of Japanese scientists used Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the world's largest radio telescope, to observe the star ST11 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). LMC is a midget satellite galaxy gravitationally bound to our own galaxy. ST11's emission lines showed a dense, concentrated region of molecular gas surrounding the star.
The "stellar cocoon" has a very different molecular structure than other objects in the Milky Way, owing to different star populations in the LMC.
Some common molecules, such as nitric oxide, formaldehyde, and sulfur dioxide were found in the chemical signatures along with organic compounds including methanol.
Takashi Shimonishi, an astronomer at Japan's Tohoku University and the lead author of the paper, said in a press release that the findings "suggest that the molecular compositions of the materials that form stars and planets are much more diverse than we expected."
The discovery will help scientists address prebiotic molecules formed in space. It will also bring up another interesting question - how a chemical variety of galaxies play into extragalactic life?
We are eager to find out about the answer to this question and to the many issues related to undiscovered secrets of the cosmos.
This research was presented in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal on August 9, 2016, entitled "The Detection of a Hot Molecular Core in the Large Magellanic Cloud with ALMA."
The team is composed of Takashi Shimonishi (Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences & Astronomical Institute, Tohoku University, Japan), Takashi Onaka (Department of Astronomy, The University of Tokyo, Japan), Akiko Kawamura (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Japan) and Yuri Aikawa (Center for Computational Sciences, The University of Tsukuba, Japan)
ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning, and operation of ALMA.
