A Sydney Ph.D. student has recreated a tiny piece of the universe inside a bottle in her laboratory, producing cosmic dust from scratch. The results shed new light on how the chemical building blocks of life may have formed long before Earth existed. Linda Losurdo, a Ph.D. candidate in materials and plasma physics in the School of Physics, used a simple mix of gases—nitrogen, carbon dioxide and acetylene—to mimic the harsh and dynamic environments around stars and supernova remnants.
By subjecting these gases to intense electrical energy, she generated carbon-rich “cosmic dust” similar to the material found drifting between stars and embedded in comets, asteroids and meteor...
Read More
Recent Comments