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Space

Two giant icy balls in space could change our understanding of stars

By Jason Arunn Murugesu

8 June 2021

Âé¶¹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

The objects were found in data collected by the AKARI spacecraft

Courtesy of ISAS/JAXA

Two mysterious, gigantic icy balls of gas have been discovered in space and they could alter our understanding of how stars form.

at Meisei University in Japan and his team found the objects when analysing data collected by the AKARI spacecraft, a Japanese observatory that examined the Milky Way in infrared from the 1980s until it suffered electrical failure in 2011.

It is unclear exactly what the balls are, or even how far away they lie, but the distance between them as they appear…

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