Latest Mian Abbas Stories

Moondust is dry, desiccated stuff, and may seem like a dull topic to write about. Indeed, you could search a ton of moondust without finding a single molecule of water, so it could make for a pretty "dry" story. But like the dust in your mother's attic, moondust covers something interesting "“ the moon "“ and even the dust itself has curious tales to tell.A group of NASA and University of Alabama researchers are what you might call "active listeners": Mian Abbas, James...

Using laser beams and electric fields, NASA researchers are probing the curious behavior of moondust.Each morning, Mian Abbas enters his laboratory and sits down to examine -- a single mote of dust. Zen-like, he studies the same speck suspended inside a basketball-sized vacuum chamber for as long as 10 to 12 days.The microscopic object of his rapt attention is not just any old dust particle. It's moondust. One by one, Abbas is measuring properties of individual dust grains returned by Apollo...

NASA -- In the safety-conscious, science-driven business of aerospace research, where laboratories routinely are set up as "clean rooms," in which sterility is paramount, Dr. Mian Abbas' lab is something of an anomaly. The word "dust" is even in its name. Not that the "Dusty Plasma Lab," part of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala., is any less well maintained than any other professional research facility -- the dust found here is...