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The world’s largest radio telescope, the $1.3 billion Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the Chilean Andes, is providing astrochemists with an unprecedented view of the molecules present as stars and planets form. ALMA’s 66 antennae allow researchers to obtain both better spectral sensitivity and better spatial resolution of molecular clouds as they coalesce into stars and planets. In particular, researchers have been able to home in on a protobinary star system in our galaxy and better resolve the surprisingly different chemical compounds around each star—one is richer in oxygen chemistry and the other has more nitrogen compounds. That might be because of a difference in the stars’ temperatures, said Ewine F. van Dishoeck of Leiden University, in the Netherlands. Additionally, the oxygen-chemistry-rich star appears to have ethylene glycol (HOCH2CH2OH), which is rare in the interstellar medium but abundant in comets in our solar system. That could indicate that Earth’s sun went through a similar formation process, van Dishoeck said.
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