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Space

Weird icy balls in space could be a totally new kind of star

After a close look with a powerful radio telescope, astronomers are still puzzled by a pair of objects with strange characteristics first spotted in 2021

By Alex Wilkins

21 January 2025

Images of the two peculiar icy objects captured by the ALMA radio telescope

Takashi Shimonishi/Niigata University

Two strange, icy objects in our galaxy that look unlike anything astronomers have ever seen could be an entirely new kind of star.

In 2021, Takashi Shimonishi at Niigata University in Japan and his colleagues spotted what appeared to be two icy balls of gas in roughly the same patch of sky, but separated by a large enough distance to be unrelated to each other.

The objects’ properties were baffling. They looked like…

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