Latest Cosmic dust Stories

Cambridge, MA -- A team of astronomers has found faint visible echoes of three ancient supernovae by detecting their centuries-old light as it is reflected by clouds of interstellar gas hundreds of light-years removed from the original explosions. Located in a nearby galaxy in the southern skies of Earth, the three exploding stars flashed into short-lived brilliance at least two centuries ago, and probably longer. The oldest one is likely to have occurred more than six hundred years ago. The...

NASA -- Stardust's voyage in space is near its end, but its cargo - the world's first cometary and interstellar dust samples - has begun its two year journey on Earth, which ends on a cold early morning on the floor of a frozen dry lakebed. After successfully collecting particles of Comet Wild 2 on Jan. 2, 2004, Stardust's Sample Return Capsule reenters Earth's atmosphere and parachutes through the darkened sky on Jan. 15, 2006. The capsule touches down at approximately 3:15 a.m. (local time)...

Thus, the process of building planets is more universal and robust than had previously been assumed (Science Express, October 20, 2005). Brown dwarfs, like more massive normal stars, are formed when interstellar gas and dust clouds collapse. When this happens, a central, dense area builds up, embedded in a rotating disc made of gas and dust. These circumstellar discs produce infrared radiation according to their temperature. The collapse of gas and dust clouds ends when the increasing...

PASADENA, Calif. -- It sounded like science fiction - NASA scientists used a space probe to chase down a speeding comet 83 million miles away and slammed it into the frozen ball of dirty ice and debris in a mission to learn how the solar system was formed. The unmanned probe of the Deep Impact mission collided with Tempel 1, a pickle-shaped comet half the size of Manhattan, late Sunday as thousands of people across the country fixed their eyes to the southwestern sky for a glimpse. The impact...

NASA and University of Arizona researchers have discovered pristine mineral grains that formed in an ancient supernova explosion. The grains were among other extraterrestrial dust plucked by high-flying NASA research aircraft from Earth's upper atmosphere after they were delivered to Earth by a comet or primitive asteroid. It is the first time anyone has ever discovered silicate grains, in this case olivine, from a supernova. They reveal important new information on how much material...

COLUMBUS , Ohio -- Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison once said that the most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. While the verdict is still out on the volume of stupidity, scientists have long known that hydrogen is indeed by far the most abundant element in the universe. When they peer through their telescopes, they see hydrogen in the vast clouds of dust and gas between stars -- especially in the denser regions that are collapsing to form new stars and planets....

ITHACA, N.Y. - The office that astronomer Lei Hao shares with her fellow research associates on the first floor of the Space Sciences Building at Cornell University is tidy and organized. But Hao has been thinking a lot lately about dust. Actually, she's recently found a great deal of it. And she's thrilled. The dust in question is between 0.88 billion and 2.4 billion light years away from Hao's office, in galaxies scientists classify as active galactic nuclei (AGNs). By confirming that the...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- The office that astronomer Lei Hao shares with her fellow research associates on the first floor of the Space Sciences Building at Cornell University is tidy and organized. But Hao has been thinking a lot lately about dust. Actually, she's recently found a great deal of it. And she's thrilled. The dust in question is between 0.88 billion and 2.4 billion light years away from Hao's office, in galaxies scientists classify as active galactic nuclei (AGNs). By confirming that the...

NASA -- Eons ago, giant clouds in space may have led to global extinctions, according to two recent technical papers supported by NASA's Astrobiology Institute. One paper outlines a rare scenario in which Earth iced over during snowball glaciations, after the solar system passed through dense space clouds. In a more likely scenario, less dense giant molecular clouds may have enabled charged particles to enter Earth's atmosphere, leading to destruction of much of the planet's protective ozone...

JPL -- How do you hide something as big and bright as a galaxy? You smother it in cosmic dust. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope saw through such dust to uncover a hidden population of monstrously bright galaxies approximately 11 billion light-years away. These strange galaxies are among the most luminous in the universe, shining with the equivalent light of 10 trillion suns. But, they are so far away and so drenched in dust, it took Spitzer's highly sensitive infrared eyes to find them....