{"id":271283,"date":"2026-02-06T21:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T21:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/271283\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T21:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T21:37:10","slug":"student-makes-cosmic-dust-in-a-lab-shining-a-light-on-the-origin-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/271283\/","title":{"rendered":"Student makes cosmic dust in a lab, shining a light on the origin of life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Recreating a piece of the universe in a bottle might sound like science fiction, but it\u2019s exactly what Linda Losurdo did.\n <\/p>\n

\n Losurdo, a doctoral student in materials and plasma physics at the University of Sydney, used simple gases and electricity to recreate conditions usually found in the vicinity of stars and supernovas to produce a tiny amount of cosmic dust.\n <\/p>\n

\n Cosmic dust<\/a> is an essential component of the universe; it plays a role in star formation and acts as a catalyst for organic molecules<\/a> that constitute the building blocks of life. The dust is abundant in interstellar space \u2014 the vast region between stars, and it is embedded in comets and asteroids. However, it\u2019s difficult to study on Earth because, although particles and rocks from space constantly bombard our planet, most of that material burns up in the atmosphere. What little survives in the form of meteorites is often impossible to locate and collect.\n <\/p>\n

\n Losurdo said that by making cosmic dust in the lab, she hopes to give scientists an extra tool to understand how life started on Earth.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhen we\u2019re looking at big questions like the origins of life, we have to look at where the building blocks started from,\u201d she said. \u201cWhere did all the carbon on Earth begin its life, and what type of journey did it have to go through in order to then be able to build into things like amino acids?\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Amino acids<\/a> were among the earliest molecules to appear on Earth and are connected to most life processes, including the formation of proteins. But there\u2019s a big question, Losurdo said, about whether amino acids were formed on Earth or if they had a different origin: space.\n <\/p>\n

\n Producing a cosmic dust analogue can help researchers investigate this and other questions about the crucial chemistry that led to life on Earth, without having to rely exclusively on samples from space.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cMeteorites take so long to fall, and it\u2019s quite hard to collect dust, let alone collect dust near a giant, dying old star,\u201d added Losurdo, whose work was published last week in The Astrophysical Journal<\/a> of the American Astronomical Society. \u201cSo we must have something to study. And even if it\u2019s only a little bit, we get a lot more information out of it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n To make the cosmic dust, Losurdo started with nitrogen, carbon dioxide and acetylene \u2014 a colorless, odorless gas made up of carbon and hydrogen. With coauthor David McKenzie, a professor of materials physics at the University of Sydney, she vacuumed the air out of a glass tube and introduced the gases. The pair then applied 10,000 volts of electricity to the gases for an hour, making a type of plasma, or electrically charged gas, called a \u201cglow discharge.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou\u2019re completing a circuit across the gas itself, so the gas is getting excited, electrons are flying off, creating an environment in which things want to bind and coalesce and aggregate,\u201d Losurdo said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s a very natural process. It\u2019s something that we know for certain happens around stars.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The result was a few milligrams of \u201cdusty nanoparticles,\u201d she added. \u201cThey are a little bit challenging to collect and analyze, so what I do is actually get the dust to deposit itself on a silicon wafer,\u201d she said. \u201cSilicon is a fantastic material for so many reasons, and it allows us to only see the stuff on the wafer itself and not the silicon.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

\n The ultimate goal of this process was to recreate space-like conditions. \u201cWe can never truly do things to the full complexity that nature does \u2014 nature will always be better than us,\u201d Losurdo said. \u201cBut what we\u2019re trying to do is get in that plausible range of conditions where our setting would represent, we hope, the envelope of a giant star, or a supernova remnant, or a new nebula.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The artificial dust created this way is similar to cosmic dust in a pristine state right after it\u2019s made. Once it becomes a catalyst for organic molecules, or becomes embedded in comets and meteorites and eventually reaches Earth, the dust has undergone multiple chemical processes, so having a lab-made analogue of its original state can help scientists understand its evolution, according to Losurdo.\n <\/p>\n

\n The next step, the researchers said, is to try changing the conditions under which the cosmic dust is made, to build up a database of different types. \u201cWe hope that one day our dust is going to be even closer to the real thing,\u201d Losurdo said, \u201cand can be \u2018matched\u2019 to specific objects like meteorites.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Cosmic<\/p>\n

\n Exploring the formation and nature of cosmic dust is a crucial part of the story of the origin of life, said Martin McCoustra, a professor of chemical physics at Scotland\u2019s Heriot-Watt University, who was not involved with the study.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cChemical complexity evolved from a very simple starting chemistry of hydrogen atoms, carbon monoxide, water and a few other small molecules deposited on dust grains,\u201d McCoustra said in an email. \u201cThis evolution can be replicated in laboratories,\u201d he added, calling the study convincing.\n <\/p>\n

\n The researchers used a clever technique to recreate the possible formation histories of cosmic organic material, according to Tobin Munsat, a professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cUltimately, this is what lab work is all about \u2014 recreating an analogue under controlled conditions that we can then apply to understand the natural world,\u201d Munsat, who did not participate in the research, wrote in an email.\n <\/p>\n

\n The results corroborate the idea that raw materials, which eventually contribute to life, are shaped by the energetic environments in which they form, Munsat said. This fact can potentially allow scientists to reconstruct the history of organic compounds found in asteroids, comets and interstellar dust, rather than treating them merely as chemically uniform.\n <\/p>\n

\n The study bridges an important gap between telescopic observations and laboratory analysis, said Damanveer Grewal, an assistant professor in the department of Earth and planetary sciences at Yale University, who also did not take part in the study.\n <\/p>\n

\n The experiment provides a good starting point to test current models of how organic matter evolves in space, Grewal added in an email.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe findings suggest that complex organic matter forms readily in stellar environments and is not unique to our solar system,\u201d he said. \u201cIf these materials are widespread, it implies that the essential chemical building blocks for life are likely available to planetary systems throughout the galaxy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Sign up for CNN\u2019s Wonder Theory science newsletter<\/a>. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recreating a piece of the universe in a bottle might sound like science fiction, but it\u2019s exactly what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-271283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}