PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Intense bursts of star formation drive fierce galactic winds

2012-08-21
(Press-News.org) Fierce galactic winds powered by an intense burst of star formation may blow gas right out of massive galaxies, shutting down their ability to make new stars.

Sifting through images and data from three telescopes, a team of astronomers found 29 objects with outflowing winds measuring up to 2,500 kilometers per second, an order of magnitude faster than most observed galactic winds.

"They're nearly blowing themselves apart," said Aleksandar Diamond-Stanic, a fellow at the University of California's Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution, who led the study. "Most galactic winds are more like fountains; the outflowing gas will fall back onto the galaxies. With the high-velocity winds we've observed the outflowing gas will escape the galaxy and never return." Diamond-Stanic and colleagues published their findings in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The galaxies they observed are a few billion light years away with outflowing winds of 500 to 2,500 kilometers per second. Initially they thought the winds might be coming from quasars, but a closer look revealed these winds emanate from entire galaxies.

Young, bright and compact, these massive galaxies are in the midst of or just completing a period of star formation as intense as anyone has ever observed.

"These galactic-scale crazy-fast winds are probably driven by the really massive stars exploding and pushing out the gas around them," said Alison Coil, professor in UC San Diego's Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences and a co-author of the paper. "There's just such a high density of those stars it's like all these bombs went off near each other at the same time. Each bomb evacuates the area around it, then the next can push gas out further until they're evacuating gas on the scale of the whole galaxy."

Galaxies with winds this fast are also quite rare, opening up the question of whether these are unusual events or part of a common phase in the evolution of massive galaxies that is seldom observed because it is so brief.

Astrophysicists still lack an explanation for how and why starmaking ends. Theorists who model the evolution of galaxies often invoke supermassive black holes called active galactic nuclei, which can also generate savage winds, to explain how gas needed to form stars can be depleted.

These new observations demonstrate that black holes may not be neccesary to account for how these kinds galaxies run out of gas. "The winds seem to be powered by the starburst," Diamond-Stanic said. "The central supermassive black hole is apparently just a spectator for these massive stellar fireworks."

###The observations are the work of a team that included also John Moustakas at UC San Diego; Christy Tremonti and Paul Sell at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Ryan Hickox at Dartmouth College, Aday Robaina at the University of Barcelona and Gregory Rudnick at the University of Kansas.

The Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution is a multi-campus research program funded by the University of California's Office of Research. Funding for the work was also provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Some data was obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Halo of neutrinos alters physics of exploding stars

2012-08-21
Sparse halos of neutrinos within the hearts of exploding stars exert a previously unrecognized influence on the physics of the explosion and may alter which elements can be forged by these violent events. John Cherry, a graduate student at UC San Diego, models stellar explosions, including a type called a core-collapse supernova. As these stars run out of fuel, their cores suddenly collapse to form a neutron star, which quickly rebounds sending seas of neutrinos through the surrounding stellar envelope and out into space. Even as the collapsed core is rebounding, the ...

WiggleZ confirms the big picture of the Universe

2012-08-21
We know that stars group together to form galaxies, galaxies clump to make clusters and clusters gather to create structures known as superclusters. At what scale though, if at all, does this Russian doll-like structure stop? Scientists have been debating this very question for decades because clustering on large scales would be in conflict with our 'standard model' of cosmology. The current model is based on Einstein's equations assuming everything is smooth on the largest scales. If matter were instead clumpy on very large scales, then the entire model would need to be ...

'CSI' technology holds potential in everyday medicine

2012-08-21
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 21, 2012 — A scientific instrument featured on CSI and CSI: Miami for instant fingerprint analysis is forging another life in real-world medicine, helping during brain surgery and ensuring that cancer patients get effective doses of chemotherapy, a scientist said here today. The report on technology already incorporated into instruments that miniaturize room-size lab instrumentation into devices the size of a shoebox was part of the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. The meeting, ...

New version of 150-year-old law could ease student debt and college funding cutbacks

2012-08-21
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 21, 2012 — Members of a panel today commemorating the 150th anniversary of federal legislation that transformed college education for people in the 19th and 20th centuries said that a 21st century counterpart to the Morrill Act of 1862 could ease the staggering load of student debt and help colleges and universities cope with state funding cutbacks. "A 21st century Morrill Act would be a wonderful symbolic and tangible move toward reinvesting in public higher education," Amy Bix, Ph.D., said in an interview prior to her presentation at the 244th National ...

In your future: More healthful foods to nourish the non-human you

2012-08-21
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 21, 2012 — The focus of nutrition for good health is quietly shifting to include consumption of food ingredients specifically designed to nourish the non-human cells that comprise 80 percent of the cells in the typical person, an authority on the topic said here today. Speaking at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, Robert Rastall, Ph.D., cited several factors driving these so-called "prebiotic" ingredients toward more foods. Food scientists, for instance, are developing new ...

New solar panels made with more common metals could be cheaper and more sustainable

2012-08-21
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 21, 2012 — With enough sunlight falling on home roofs to supply at least half of America's electricity, scientists today described advances toward the less-expensive solar energy technology needed to roof many of those homes with shingles that generate electricity. Shingles that generate electricity from the sun, and can be installed like traditional roofing, already are a commercial reality. But the advance ― a new world performance record for solar cells made with "earth-abundant" materials ― could make them more affordable and ease the ...

Communicating controversial science: A symposium honoring Rudy M. Baum

2012-08-21
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 21, 2012 — The American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, is holding a special symposium today honoring Rudy M. Baum, editor-in-chief of its weekly newsmagazine, whose thought-provoking editorials and editorial leadership made Baum an icon among ACS' more than 164,000 members. "Rudy Baum's editorials focused on some of the greatest challenges facing humanity," said ACS President Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, Ph.D., who organized the symposium. It is part of the 244th ACS National Meeting & Exposition, a scientific extravaganza ...

Advances in decades-old dream of mining seawater for uranium

2012-08-21
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 21, 2012 — Scientists today reported progress toward a 40-year-old dream of extracting uranium for nuclear power from seawater, which holds at least 4 billion tons of the precious material. They described some of the most promising technology and an economic analysis showing uranium from the oceans could help solidify nuclear energy potential as a sustainable electricity source for the 21st century. Their reports were part of a symposium at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, ...

Looking 1 cell at a time in the brain to better understand pain, learning, memory

2012-08-21
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 21, 2012 — Working with units of material so small that it would take 50,000 to make up one drop, scientists are developing the profiles of the contents of individual brain cells in a search for the root causes of chronic pain, memory loss and other maladies that affect millions of people. They described the latest results of this one-by-one exploration of cells or "neurons" from among the millions present in an animal brain at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The ...

Eating cool: What to eat to beat the heat

2012-08-21
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 21, 2012 — The refreshing chill of today's fudge-brownie cookie-crumble ice cream cone ― will it really last? Or can ice cream actually stoke the body's metabolic furnace and make you feel even hotter? How about a few ice-cold brews? Or should you add a dash of the counter-intuitive to your summer menu with the sweat-inducing, mouth-on-fire, tear-provoking taste of chili peppers? With millions of people already weather-worn after a summer punctuated by record heat, and some of the hottest days still ahead, the American Chemical Society (ACS) ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Insights from 15 years of collaborative microbiome research with Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon

Designing polymers for use in next-generation bioelectronics

Losing Nemo: Almost all aquarium fish in the US are caught in the wild

Revisiting minimum case volume recommendations for complex surgery in contemporary practice

Medicaid innovation models improve care for moms, but design matters

Cannabis use among individuals with psychosis after state-level commercial cannabis legalization

Open-label placebos as adjunct for the preventive treatment of migraine

Moon's biggest impact crater made a radioactive splash

Smoking and biological sex shape healthy bladder tissue evolution, offering clues to cancer risk

Improved genetic tool reveals hidden mutations that can drive cancer

Hidden evolution in sperm raises disease risk for children as men age

Women portrayed as younger than men online, and AI amplifies the bias

Engineered bacterial therapy activates immune response in cancer preclinical studies

Energy flexibility is reshaping Finland’s electricity market

Individuals with sickle cell disease face long delays to pain care in emergency department

Association for Molecular Pathology develops standardized biomarker report template for providers

Making regular GPS ultra-precise

Webb Telescope unveils doomed star hidden in dust

UT Southwestern preventive cardiologist to receive the 2025 Chairman’s Award

Slime mold metabolites are a promising, eco-friendly repellent of root-knot nematodes

Pathological mechanism of mechanosensitive cells driving the growth of keloids

First large-scale Alzheimer disease study in brain tissue from African American donors implicates roles for many novel genes

In a nasal spray, gold “nanoparticles” deliver a targeted treatment to the brain. A potentially revolutionary approach to mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases already has a patent

Current and recommended diets in the USA have embedded forced labor risk

AI breakthrough helps astronomers spot cosmic events with just a handful of examples

New vaccine shows promise against typhoid and invasive salmonella in first human trial

Engineered “natural killer” cells could help fight cancer

New 3D printing method ‘grows’ ultra-strong materials

Lizard genetics provide new perspective on evolution

Can a Stevia-derived sweetener improve hair loss treatment?

[Press-News.org] Intense bursts of star formation drive fierce galactic winds