Some of the Earth’s building material was stardust from red giants. Astronomers can also explain why the Earth contains more of this stardust than the asteroids or the planet Mars, which are farther from the sun.

Around 4.5 billion years ago, an interstellar molecular cloud collapsed. At its centre, the Sun was formed; around that, a disc of gas and dust appeared, out of which the earth and the other planets would form. This thoroughly mixed interstellar material included exotic grains of dust: “Stardust that had formed around other suns,” explains Maria Schoenbaechler, a professor at the Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology at ETH Zurich...

Researchers developed a living material approach that uses a strain of genetically engineered E.coli Nissle bacteria as a locally acting probiotic...

Synthesis of the thinnest possible diamond-like material starting from bilayer graphene and without high pressure. Can two layers of the “king of the wonder materials,” i.e...

Scientists may have figured out the origins of planets. Scientists may have figured out how dust particles can stick together to form planets, according to a Rutgers co-authored study that may also help to improve industrial processes.

In homes, adhesion on contact can cause fine particles to form dust bunnies. Similarly in outer space, adhesion causes dust particles to stick together. Large particles, however, can combine due to gravity – an essential process in forming asteroids and planets. But between these two extremes, how aggregates grow has largely been a mystery until now.

The study, published in the journal Nature Physics, found that particles under microgravity – similar to conditions believed to be in interplanetary space – d...