Dust that forms stars and planets recreated by Edinburgh laboratory team

The dust that forms the stars and planets of our galaxy has been recreated in a laboratory.

A team of scientists from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have spent the past 12 years investigating how ice forms and behaves around tiny specks in the interstellar environment. Picture: NASA

Professor Martin McCoustra and a team of scientists from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have spent the past 12 years investigating how ice forms and behaves around tiny specks in the interstellar environment.

From that, new stars and planets are formed, as well as structures like the Eagle Nebula, providing a source of complex organic molecules from which life can originate.

The astrochemists recreated deep space in their lab and found the dust to be much more structurally complex than first thought.

Prof McCoustra compared it to a “badly-baked cherry cake” instead of the widely-held belief that the dust is structured like an onion.

He said: “These tiny little snowballs have key roles to play in the evolution of the current universe, from controlling the process of star formation to providing an inventory of organic molecules from which biology might evolve.

“If we understand their formation and evolution then we can more fully appreciate those roles.

“The onion model visualises the icy coat of the grains as a series of layers, where the core dust grain is first fully covered by a thick layer of water-rich ice. On top of that layer, other species are adsorbed depending on temperature.

“This means only a relatively pure layer of water interacts directly with the dust grain surface while other species, such as carbon monoxide, will interact with the water surface.

“We discovered that water is more mobile on the dust grain surface and tends to form little islands of ice as opposed to a uniform film. This leaves parts of the grain surface free on which other species can adsorb.

“So instead of an onion, picture a badly-baked cherry cake, where the cherries of water have sunk to the bottom of the icy cake as it is baked.”

A space dust proxy - copper plate coated in tiny silica particles, cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero and in an ultrahigh vacuum - was used for the experiments on various species found in the environment.

Prof McCoustra added: “We are refining our model of how space dust grows and have, through a combination of observation and computer simulation, developed a yet-to-be-proven hypothesis.”The paper - Surface Science Investigations of Icy Mantle Growth on Interstellar Dust Grains in Cooling Environments - can be read in full online.