Recreating a piece of the universe in a bottle might sound like science fiction, but it’s exactly what Linda Losurdo did.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.Cosmic dust is an essential component of the universe; it plays a role in star formation and acts as a catalyst for organic molecules that constitute the building blocks of life. The dust is abundant in interstellar space — the vast region between stars, and it is embedded in comets and asteroids. However, it’s 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.AdvertisementAdvertisementLosurdo said that by making cosmic dust in the lab, she hopes to give scientists an extra tool to understand how life started on Earth.“When we’re looking at big questions like the origins of life, we have to look at where the building blocks started from,” she said. “Where 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?”Amino acids were among the earliest molecules to appear on Earth and are connected to most life processes, including the formation of proteins. But there’s a big question, Losurdo said, about whether amino acids were formed on Earth or if they had a different origin: space.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.AdvertisementAdvertisement“Meteorites take so long to fall, and it’s quite hard to collect dust, let alone collect dust n …
