Nereide

Figure 1 from the paper: The striking RGB composite (F444W red, F277W green, F115W+F150W blue) shows the galaxy COSMOS2020-635829’s bright white core standing out sharply against a deep blue background. Dashed circles mark the four extraplanar star-forming knots in the galaxy's tail.

🧵
A recent paper presents COSMOS2020-635829: a candidate jellyfish galaxy we see as it was ~8.5 billion yrs ago, captured with #JWST + Gemini spectroscopy. 🔭

If confirmed, this is the farthest-ever detected tail of stripped ionized gas from ram pressure.🧪

➡️ uwaterloo.ca/news/media/s...

⚛️ 1/10

JWST Reveals a Candidate Jellyfish Galaxy at z = 1.156 JWST Reveals a Candidate Jellyfish Galaxy at z = 1.156, Roberts, Ian D., Balogh, Michael L., Sok, Visal, Muzzin, Adam, Hudson, Michael J., Jablonka, Pascale

...and follow-up observations to understand its real broader impact.

Paper: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Image credit: Roberts et al. / COSMOS-Web / JWST. Figure 1 from the paper.
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at work (and perhaps help cause environmental quenching — the process that shuts off star formation in dense environments) at z > 1 (~8.5 billion years ago), earlier or in denser settings than some models predicted.

One galaxy isn't statistics — we need more candidates...⤵️

9/10

ring galaxy (though they consider both less likely); this is still just a candidate; the gas tail they see is cut off by the limited field of view of the IFU instrument; & they don't have data on H-alpha emission or molecular gas yet

If confirmed: shows ram-pressure stripping could already be⤵️
8/10

showing faint-to-moderate X-rays.

The blue knots are much bluer than the main disk (ruling out the idea that they’re just old stars stripped away by tides), and the gas moves together with the galaxy.

Authors' clear caveats: They can't completely rule out a tidal origin or a collisional⤵️

7/10

Together they account for ~1% of the main disk's stellar mass & ~0.5% of its star formation rate.
In-situ star formation in the stripped gas tail.

Supporting points: the galaxy is in a dense environment — a group or small cluster with a total mass of roughly 10 to 100 trillion Suns & hot gas⤵️
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...in motion to the galaxy itself (a gentle, orderly shift in speed across the whole structure).

The tail knots: each has a mass of about 100 million solar masses forming the equivalent of roughly 0.1 to 1 Sun per year (averaged over the last 100 Myr).

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...these are very young stars, less than about 100 Myr old. Using IFU spectroscopy (a tool that maps gas across space), we detect an ionized gas tail right where those knots are (in the same place on the sky). The tail stretches ~20 kpc (~65,000 ly) south of the disk & is smoothly connected⤵️
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Sometimes new stars even form right inside those tails.
Until now, clear examples of these ionized gas tails had only been found up to z ≈ 0.7 — about 5.5 billion years ago in look-back time.
JWST shows: a fairly symmetric stellar disk plus a trail of small, bright blue knots to the south—⤵️

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Jellyfish galaxies get their name from the long, tentacle-like tails of gas trailing behind them.

When a galaxy races through a dense cluster, the hot gas there acts like a strong headwind, stripping the galaxy’s own gas out the back — that’s ram-pressure stripping.

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Figure 1 from the paper: The striking RGB composite (F444W red, F277W green, F115W+F150W blue) shows the galaxy COSMOS2020-635829’s bright white core standing out sharply against a deep blue background. Dashed circles mark the four extraplanar star-forming knots in the galaxy's tail.

🧵
A recent paper presents COSMOS2020-635829: a candidate jellyfish galaxy we see as it was ~8.5 billion yrs ago, captured with #JWST + Gemini spectroscopy. 🔭

If confirmed, this is the farthest-ever detected tail of stripped ionized gas from ram pressure.🧪

➡️ uwaterloo.ca/news/media/s...

⚛️ 1/10

The image is a collage (made by me with photos in the public domain, found online ) that includes nine female scientists, who have played a fundamental role in the history of nuclear physics.

"The Dawn of Nuclear Physics: The Role of Women" is an article of mine where I tried to provide a historical context to the fundamental role some female scientists have had in the early stages of nuclear physics and its history.

➡️ www.tutto-scienze.org/2013/04/lalb...

#InternationalWomensDay ⚛️ 🧪

See: www.aip.org/library/befo...

or Symmetry Mag (2005): www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/apri...

And book "After the War" by Ruth Howes (2015).
Postwar cultural/economic shifts hit hard, but slow recovery started in the 70s.

massive funding and prestige, the GI Bill brought a huge influx of men into universities, postwar culture pushed women 'back home' to make room for returning soldiers, and many institutions had 'marriage bars' that forced married women to quit.

AIP stats show PhD % halved in 50s-60s.⤵️

Your impression is correct.
Pre-WWII, women were relatively more visible in early radioactivity/nuclear physics in small Euro labs with fewer traditional barriers for outsiders
After WWII there was a noticeable drop in women's participation: the field exploded into 'big science' with⤵️

This view shows puffing dust bubbles and an erupting gas shell — the final acts of a monster star. It is about the star AG Carinae. The image showcases the details of the ionised hydrogen and ionised nitrogen emissions from the nebula (seen here in red). The blue demonstrates the contrasting appearance of the distribution of the dust that shines of reflected stellar light. Astronomers believe that the dust bubbles and filaments formed within and were shaped by powerful stellar wind . The star is surrounded by an expanding shell of gas and dust — a nebula — that is shaped by the powerful winds emanating from the star. The nebula is about five light-years wide, equal to the distance from here to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

🧵
#Hubble celebrated its 31st anniversary with this impressive view of AG Carinae, a luminous blue variable (LBV) 20,000 ly away in the constellation Carina.

Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Nota, C. Britt 🔭 🧪 ⚛️

➡️ esahubble.org/images/potw2...

#universe #space #astronomy #stellarastro #science 1/3

👍

I totally get the supernova impatience – who'd say no to a galactic fireworks show?

But yeah, on cosmic timescales 'imminently' could mean anywhere from tomorrow to tens of thousands of years... patience is key in astronomy!

Thanks for the kind words – glad you liked it!

Exactly! Time really does fly when you're staring at wonders like this. Now it's closer to 36 years of mind-blowing views from orbit – and AG Carinae still looks just as epic!

The star is in a constant fight between gravity and radiation to maintain stability and avoid self-destruction. Its expected lifetime is, in fact, between 5 and 6 Myr.

The vast structure of the nebula surrounding it was created from one or more giant eruptions many thousand years ago.

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LBVs are massive evolved stars showing unpredictable and sometimes considerable changes in their spectra and luminosity.

AG Carinae is one of the most luminous stars in our galaxy, but not visible to the naked eye because of its distance and surrounding dust.

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This view shows puffing dust bubbles and an erupting gas shell — the final acts of a monster star. It is about the star AG Carinae. The image showcases the details of the ionised hydrogen and ionised nitrogen emissions from the nebula (seen here in red). The blue demonstrates the contrasting appearance of the distribution of the dust that shines of reflected stellar light. Astronomers believe that the dust bubbles and filaments formed within and were shaped by powerful stellar wind . The star is surrounded by an expanding shell of gas and dust — a nebula — that is shaped by the powerful winds emanating from the star. The nebula is about five light-years wide, equal to the distance from here to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

🧵
#Hubble celebrated its 31st anniversary with this impressive view of AG Carinae, a luminous blue variable (LBV) 20,000 ly away in the constellation Carina.

Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Nota, C. Britt 🔭 🧪 ⚛️

➡️ esahubble.org/images/potw2...

#universe #space #astronomy #stellarastro #science 1/3

Great thread from John Baez! Read it.

In short, with an extraordinarily elegant theoretical reasoning based on relativity, QM, and the known size of atomic nuclei, Yukawa correctly predicted the existence & mass of a new fundamental particle… which was discovered only years later!

🧪 ⚛️ #histsci 1/3

...whose mass he calculated to be intermediate between that of the proton and the electron.

A masterpiece of theoretical #physics! 🧪 ⚛️

Yukawa Paper (PDF): isidore.co/misc/Physics...

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In 1935, Yukawa published a paper titled “On the Interaction of Elementary Particles” (Proc. Phys. Math. Soc. Japan, 17, 48-57)⚛️, in which he proposed a field theory of nuclear forces that predicted a new interaction (today known as the strong interaction) and the existence of a particle...

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Great thread from John Baez! Read it.

In short, with an extraordinarily elegant theoretical reasoning based on relativity, QM, and the known size of atomic nuclei, Yukawa correctly predicted the existence & mass of a new fundamental particle… which was discovered only years later!

🧪 ⚛️ #histsci 1/3

If you like the double-barrelled surname and your partner is on board, go for it now.
The hassle is real, but it's a one-time investment, and in a few months everything will be sorted out.
Good luck, whatever you choose will be fine — the important thing is that you feel comfortable with it.🤞

"The main image at left shows a combined Webb and Hubble view of spiral galaxy NGC 1637. Panels at right show a detailed view of a red supergiant star before and after it exploded. Before exploding, it was not visible to Hubble, only to Webb. Hubble shows the glowing aftermath. Hubble's shorter-wavelength data is represented in blue and green, while Webb's longer-wavelength data is represented in green and red."

🧵On 2025 June 29, the ASAS-SN detected a supernova in NGC 1637 at ≈ 39–40 Mly. 🔭 ⚛️ 🧪

One team searched old archive images & found the star that exploded: the first published detection of a supernova progenitor candidate by #JWST.

Full paper here ➡️ iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

#universe 1/8

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.

Hey! Now you can read about my work on applied category theory here on Quanta magazine! And not just me, lots of folks....

www.quantamagazine.org/can-the-most...

...with potentially lethal effects extending up to 50 parsecs (about 160 light-years) for certain types of explosions.

400 light-years is well beyond any serious threat.