All posts tagged: Cosmic Dust

Cosmic simulations reveal how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years

Cosmic simulations reveal how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years

Published by Jenni Sidey

Cold gas does not look dramatic at first glance. Neither does dust. Yet those two quiet ingredients sit at the center of a new effort to build a far more realistic picture of how galaxies formed. They help explain how galaxies changed and spread across the universe over billions of years. A new suite of simulations called COLIBRE now tracks both, along with the violent push and pull from stars and black holes, in a way earlier large-scale models usually could not. The result is a set of virtual universes that, according to the research team, reproduces real galaxies with striking accuracy, from the nearby universe to the distant young cosmos seen by the James Webb Space Telescope. That matters because galaxy simulations have become one of astronomy’s main testing grounds. They let scientists check whether the standard cosmological model can actually produce the kinds of galaxies telescopes observe. In this case, the answer looks stronger than before. Essential components “Much of the gas inside real galaxies is cold and dusty, but most previous large …

Student made cosmic dust in the lab revealing life’s early chemical origins

Student made cosmic dust in the lab revealing life’s early chemical origins

Published by Jenni Sidey

At the University of Sydney, a Ph.D. student has recreated a tiny slice of outer space and used it to make cosmic dust from scratch. Linda Losurdo, a doctoral researcher in materials and plasma physics at the University of Sydney School of Physics, led the work alongside her supervisor, Professor David McKenzie. Their findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal, show how the chemical building blocks of life may have formed long before Earth even existed. Recreating space chemistry on Earth The experiment starts with a simple setup. A mix of common gases, including nitrogen and carbon-based compounds, is sealed inside glass tubes. When high electrical energy is applied, the gases break apart and recombine under harsh conditions that resemble space environments around stars and stellar explosions. Cosmic dust analogue on a chip. The cocktail of chemicals was collected on a microchip. (CREDIT: Fiona Wolf) Over time, tiny particles form and settle onto small surfaces inside the tube. What you get is carbon-rich cosmic dust, the same kind of material that drifts between stars and later …