At its Plenary Meeting, the local government (Cabildo) of Tenerife agreed unanimously to confer the Island of Tenerife Gold Medal to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), as well as to Loro Parque zoo and the painter Pedro González González.
An international study, carried out by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has participated, shows that the universe could produce extremely luminous galaxies at very early epochs, when it was only some 3% of its present age. This result implies that these galaxies formed stars before, and more quickly than predicted by current theoretical models. The study also reveals an unusual galaxy that “imitates” the emission from a very distant galaxy. The results are published in the journal Nature. During the first months of scientific
An international collaboration, with participation by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has found a system of six exoplanets orbiting a central star with a precise rhythm.This phenomenon, known as orbital resonance, is common during the starting phase of planet formation, but it is exceptional to find a system with such a large set of planets which conserves this kind of gravitational synchronism. This finding shows that the system has not undergone major changes during its six billion year history, so that it gives an unusual view of the formation and evolution of planets. The
The IAC researcher Susana Iglesias-Groth has discovered the existence of tryptophan, an amino acid essential for the formation of proteins and the develoment of living organisms, within a stellar system in the Perseus Cloud. She did this using data from the Spitzer Space Observatory. The results of this finding are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Tryptophan is one of the 20 amino acids considered essential for the formation of proteins, which are key macromolecules for the development of life on Earth. This amino acid has many spectral features in
