A new analysis of space dust has revealed that the cosmic particles, which are likely to have originated from beyond our solar system, are more complex in composition and structure than previously imagined.
The dust analysis was carried out after a special collector onboard Nasa’s Stardust mission sent it back to earth for study in 2006.
“Fundamentally, the solar system and everything in it was ultimately derived from a cloud of interstellar gas and dust,” said Andrew Westphal, physicist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.
“The analysis of these particles captured by Stardust is our first glimpse into the complexity of interstellar dust, and the surprise is that each of the particles are quite different from each other,” informed Andrew Westphal.
