Did you know that most of the material delivered to Earth from space comes in the form of microscopic “cosmic dust”? These tiny extra-terrestrial particles exist everywhere in the solar system – from small grains in the asteroid belt, to spacedust in the zodiacal cloud (a faint glow that can be seen from Earth at night), and even in the icy rings of Saturn.
A single speck of cosmic dust could record evidence of large-scale astrophysical events like nearby rocky collisions, so how do scientists interrogate these tiny time capsules? In this blog, ESE PhD student, Isabelle S. Mattia explores the wonderous world of space dust further…
