Astronomy at The Open University 2023-2026 (Consolidated Grant)

这项提议将为开放大学的天文学研究人员提供资金。我们将使用一种被称为引力透镜的现象来研究最遥远的已知天体。这是广义相对论的一个特征，对我们的目的非常有用：中等距离的大质量扭曲时空可以放大位于可见宇宙边缘的物体的图像，使它们更可见。我们正在使用智利66个射电望远镜的强大集合-ALMA-来研究红移在2到5之间的星系中的水。通过这样做，我们将了解整个宇宙历史上恒星的形成。这将让我们对我们今天在宇宙中看到的最大的星系如何形成有新的理解。我们正在使用另一组位于欧洲的射电望远镜LOFAR来了解从星系中心加速出来的高能粒子喷流。这些喷流非常长--比整个星系的大小都要长--以及发射无线电波的狭窄结构。LOFAR是极其敏感的，它正在探测以前的望远镜无法看到的喷流。这改变了我们对喷流具有特殊形状和亮度模式的一些理解。我们将使用一台名为欧几里德的新欧洲太空望远镜来研究在遥远星系中形成的巨大恒星团块。将有大量的图像可供查看，因此我们将使用公民科学来生成大量我们正在寻找的标识。然后，我们将训练人工智能来寻找所有类似的例子。我们将在我们银河系的太阳局部找到小型岩石行星的例子，这些行星大约有地球大小，绕太阳运行。我们正在寻找的这些岩石是热的，在某些情况下，热到它们的岩石表面被熔化或变成气体然后逸出。这些特殊的行星很有用，因为我们可以使用通过逸出气体过滤的星光来测量它们岩石表面的化学成分。我们将在实验室和詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜中研究冰--正常的冰水以及由一氧化碳、二氧化碳和甲醇制成的冰。这将揭示冰在行星形成的早期阶段将颗粒粘在一起的作用。如果没有这一点，谷物将反弹分离，而不是生长成鹅卵石，地球等行星将无法形成。

This proposal will fund astronomy researchers at The Open University. We will study the very most distant known objects, using a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This is a feature of general relativity which is very useful for our purposes: the warping of space-time by large masses at intermediate distances can magnify the images of objects right at the edge of the observable Universe, making them more visible. We are using a powerful collection of 66 radio telescopes in Chile - called ALMA - to study water in galaxies at redshifts between 2 and 5. By doing this we will learn about the formation of stars throughout the history of the Universe. This will give us new understanding of how the very biggest galaxies which we see in the present-day Universe formed.We are using another array of radio telescopes based in Europe called LOFAR to learn about jets of energetic particles which are accelerated out from the centre of galaxies. These jets are very long - longer than the size of a whole galaxy - and narrow structures which emit radio waves. LOFAR is extremely sensitive and is detecting jets which previous telescopes couldn't see. This is changing some of our understanding of what causes jets to have particular shapes and brightness patterns.Using a new European space telescope called Euclid we are going to study giant clumps of stars forming in distance galaxies. There will be huge numbers of images to look at, so we are going to use citizen science to generate a large number of identifications of what we are looking for. Then we will train artificial intelligence to find all the similar examples.We will find examples of small rocky planets - roughly Earth-sized - orbiting stars in the Sun's local part of our Galaxy. The ones we are looking for are hot, in some cases so hot that their rocky surfaces are molten or turned into gas which escapes. These particular planets are useful because we can use the starlight filtered through the escaping gas to measure the chemical composition of their rocky surfaces. We will study ices - normal frozen water as well as ices made from carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and methanol - in the laboratory and with the James Webb Space Telescope. This will reveal the role ice plays in sticking grains together in the early stages of planet formation. Without this grains would bounce apart instead of growing to produce pebbles, and planets like the Earth would not be able to form.