Xunchuan Liu

In the dark cloud G318.049+00.086, where no star has yet formed, dust and gas have arranged themselves into four long filaments. They converge into a dense central hub, like four rivers emptying into a lake. Gas flows along these filaments toward the center: the flow speed reaches 10–20 kilometers per second per parsec of length.

Long before a star ignites in a gas cloud, chemical life is already bustling. In cold, dense clumps of gas, called starless cores, atoms stick together to form molecules, both simple and complex. To peer into this invisible kitchen, astronomers aimed a 40-meter radio telescope in Yebes at 23 such clouds in the Orion Nebula.