WINTER 2000 |
VOLUME 9, NUMBER 2 |
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TOP STORY Gas clouds seem key
in An international research team has found that massive clouds of gas appear to play a key role in the ability of the Milky Way to produce new stars. The 10-member team, which includes an astrophysicist from Lewis & Clark College, reports in the current issue of the journal Nature that the massive clouds rain gas down onto Earth's home galaxy, seeding it with star-forming material. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope and five other telescopes were used to evaluate what astronomers call high-velocity clouds, mysterious structures that move through space at high speeds and do not rotate along with the rest of the Milky Way. These clouds--discovered 35 years ago--move at about 225,000 to 450,000 mph far above the galaxy's rotating disk. Read more. |
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