Globular clusters – dazzling agglomerations of up to a million ancient stars – are among the oldest objects in the universe. Though plentiful in and around many galaxies, newborn examples are vanishingly rare and the conditions necessary to create new ones have never been detected, until now. Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered what may be the first known example of a globular cluster about to be born: an incredibly massive, extremely dense, yet star-free cloud of molecular gas.

This specific odor can be compared to a “chemical ID”, facilitating identification by fellow insects, and can be used to label insects as members of a particular colony, as male or female, as young or old, or as a queen or worker. The discovery was made by researchers at the University of São Paulo’s Ribeirão Preto School of Philosophy, Science and Letters (Ffclrp-USP) during a series of studies performed as part of the project Behavioural mediation, chemical signalisation and physiological aspects regulating the social organisation in himenopterans, supported by Fapesp within the ambit of its Young Investigators Grants program.