Advertisement

If you have an ACS member number, please enter it here so we can link this account to your membership. (optional)

ACS values your privacy. By submitting your information, you are gaining access to C&EN and subscribing to our weekly newsletter. We use the information you provide to make your reading experience better, and we will never sell your data to third party members.

ENJOY UNLIMITED ACCES TO C&EN

Physical Chemistry

Two Lonely Gas Blobs

Astronomers find ancient interstellar gas clouds with no heavy elements

by Elizabeth K. Wilson
November 14, 2011 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 89, Issue 46

Astronomers have found two ancient clouds of gas in interstellar space that contain no elements heavier than deuterium (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1213581). Until now all gas clouds detected have contained elements heavier than helium, indicating that they’d once been part of the makeup of a star, where primordial light elements fused together to make heavier elements. These two newly discovered clouds, the light from which comes from 2 billion years after the Big Bang, have therefore never been involved in star production. Michele Fumagalli of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and colleagues detected the clouds with spectrometers on the Keck I Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. “It’s quite exciting, because it’s the first evidence that fully matches the composition of the primordial gas predicted by the Big Bang theory,” Fumagalli says.

Article:

This article has been sent to the following recipient:

0 /1 FREE ARTICLES LEFT THIS MONTH Remaining
Chemistry matters. Join us to get the news you need.