NASA creates star dust here on Earth for the first time: Carl Sagan would be proud

Here on Earth, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, scientists have created stardust — or more accurately, they’ve recreated the dust that forms in the outer atmosphere of a dying red giant star (such a red giant is pictured above, with its dust cloud perfectly captured by Hubble). Out there in space, over millions of years, this interstellar dust gathers together into a nebula and goes on to coalesce into planets and other stars. Down here on Earth, of course, NASA isn’t trying to create its own planets (not yet, anyway) — no, they have the much more humble undertaking of trying to better understand how the universe and its trillions of planets and stars evolved over the last 14 billion years.

NASA creates star dust here on Earth for the first time: Carl Sagan would be proud



I'm sure Carl Sagan would indeed be proud. The Man tried to teach a generation about the wonders of our universe, experiments such as this prove that he succeeded and honor his memory tremendously.

After all we are indeed made of the stuff!

originally posted by: andy06shake
After all we are indeed made of the stuff!

Yes. I love it that I'm made of stardust. Narcissist that I am. ; )


Great find. F&S&

a reply to: soficrow

You could almost say you're full of it...


Yeah that's cool, wonder if they could grow a planet like structure in condensed form?

Can we bake raps from scratch liek carl sagan?

Can't possibly be true - the whole universe is only 6000 years old after all....

Seriously tho - lovely find - the universe is truly awe inspiring

originally posted by: andy06shake

Here on Earth, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, scientists have created stardust — or more accurately, they’ve recreated the dust that forms in the outer atmosphere of a dying red giant star (such a red giant is pictured above, with its dust cloud perfectly captured by Hubble). Out there in space, over millions of years, this interstellar dust gathers together into a nebula and goes on to coalesce into planets and other stars. Down here on Earth, of course, NASA isn’t trying to create its own planets (not yet, anyway) — no, they have the much more humble undertaking of trying to better understand how the universe and its trillions of planets and stars evolved over the last 14 billion years.

NASA creates star dust here on Earth for the first time: Carl Sagan would be proud

I'm sure Carl Sagan would indeed be proud. The Man tried to teach a generation about the wonders of our universe, experiments such as this prove that he succeeded and honor his memory tremendously.

After all we are indeed made of the stuff!

Nasa should be spending this money figuring out how to remove CO2 from our atmosphere. All that stuff is great and should be something we do but maybe not right now. I would focus on two things. Saving our environment and colonizing space. What's going on in deeeep deep space and making star dust can wait till we have secured humanities future on earth and in our solar system.

Just sayin...

Next step?

Kyptonite!

Hey NASA ...

do you mind ?

According to current estimates, about 40,000 tons of extraterrestrial matter hit the Earth every year.

Read more: www.universetoday.com...

...as if I don't spend enough time vaccuuming already !!!!!


sheesh

Billions and Billions ( in a carl Sagen Voice)

thats all I got

Sorry, but just had to post it:

"Stardust" by Glenn Miller

IF they can do this now and perfect the technology to create certain elements we could theoretically make good and silver?

a reply to: andy06shake

I'd like to confess my ignorance about all things related to astrophysics. With that in mind, would someone explain why this is significant, important, encouraging, or anything else?

From the source:

At the Ames Research Center, NASA’s Cosmic Simulation Chamber (which is lumbered with the fantastically useless acronym COSmIC) has the exceedingly rare ability to recreate the harsh conditions of deep space. There, on the outer edge of a dying star, temperatures average 100 Kelvin (-170C, -273F), the atmosphere is one billionth that of Earth’s, and there’s tons of ultraviolet radiation. While the COSmIC mimics these conditions, the scientists inject some small hydrocarbon molecules, and then watch as various chemical processes turn these molecules into the solid dust grains that are produced en masse by dying stars.

It seems they are saying that scientists took an enclosed space, sucked out as much heat and air as they could, dosed it with a lot of ultraviolet radiation. They then squirted some hydrocarbon into the space, and watched it clump into larger pieces of "stuff."

I honestly am not making fun of it, I'm curious as to it's interest outside of scientific circles. Sure, I know, "Sagan" and "Stardust" make for a great headline, but what am I missing? I hope it's more than "Little bits of hydrocarbons eventually get together to make bigger bits, and so on and so on."

originally posted by: Xeven

originally posted by: andy06shake

Here on Earth, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, scientists have created stardust — or more accurately, they’ve recreated the dust that forms in the outer atmosphere of a dying red giant star (such a red giant is pictured above, with its dust cloud perfectly captured by Hubble). Out there in space, over millions of years, this interstellar dust gathers together into a nebula and goes on to coalesce into planets and other stars. Down here on Earth, of course, NASA isn’t trying to create its own planets (not yet, anyway) — no, they have the much more humble undertaking of trying to better understand how the universe and its trillions of planets and stars evolved over the last 14 billion years.

NASA creates star dust here on Earth for the first time: Carl Sagan would be proud

I'm sure Carl Sagan would indeed be proud. The Man tried to teach a generation about the wonders of our universe, experiments such as this prove that he succeeded and honor his memory tremendously.

After all we are indeed made of the stuff!

Nasa should be spending this money figuring out how to remove CO2 from our atmosphere. All that stuff is great and should be something we do but maybe not right now. I would focus on two things. Saving our environment and colonizing space. What's going on in deeeep deep space and making star dust can wait till we have secured humanities future on earth and in our solar system.

Just sayin...

Well, I can agree humans will HAVE to branch out into other planets, or even galaxies for that matter, if we are to ultimately have a chance of surviving for a very long time. Mostly due to the fact that our sun isn't going to be here forever. Though, we are lucky that our sun isn't all that big. Large stars burn live fast and die young. Although, maybe something else here on Earth could do the trick. Such as a massive extinction period. There's already been theorized multiple such periods. Something like 98% of all organisms on Earth were here on day, gone the next. Even though we humans pat ourselves on the backs, we are still a target.

But, I will say that colonizing the solar system outside of Earth would be a very small baby step. The best planet other than Earth would be Mars. You could pretty much rule out the gas planets, as well as mercury. The moon? Eh, not too sure about that one, a bit too iffy. On top of that, when the Sun goes, it's going to take down the entire solar system with it. We still have a whole lot of time left it seems. But colonizing a planet in out back yard would be easy compared to colonizing deep space. Which we would need to end up doing if we really want to be around for a long time.

So this experiment wouldn't be all that of a bad thing to do. We need to fully understand how the universe operates before we start becoming cosmic architects. Plus, NASA wouldn't be the best of people to take on the issue of CO2 or pollution. NASA does stand for national aeronautics and space administration after all. That't not what their research and focus should be aimed at. Though I agree 100% we need to clean up the Earth. Surely before we go around trashing the rest of the galaxy/solar system. Earth as of right now is a very, very poor model to follow by.

I really wish Carl was still with us, hes a legend like Professor Hawking. I really miss Carl's time on TV when he would get invited in to explain something and he always did such a smashing job of explaining it to idiots like myself.

He wrote some damned fine books too.

Iris.

Iris ...

fractals ...

Zero point ...

Minds Blown ...

ED: As above - as below ...

a reply to: JewelOfDenial

Haw haw. ...Condensed planet sounds good. Don't see why not.

Just a matter of time I suppose. ; )

a reply to: Slickinfinity

"theoretically make gold and silver"

I think that's already been done at least with Gold which can be created artificially in a reactor or particle accelerator by irradiating platinum or mercury. Its in no way cost-effective through, I can't see how this experiment would help.

en.wikipedia.org...

news.discovery.com...a reply to: Honcho

the only problem with moving to mars would be that were finding out more and more that it would be a deadly place to live, there are all sorts of toxic minerals on the planet. I was reading a SYSK podcast on Mars and they were talking about how theres a mineral that sterilizes humans one that harms are thyroid, and a bunch of crap that like silica that would destroy our lungs. and its everywhere the soil is made of the stuff which also means it would most likely be in any water or ice found on the planet. good news is though there is a bacteria on earth known to live off of one of the minerals.

a reply to: bigcountry08

I suppose given our current leaps and bounds pertaining to genetic engineering It may soon be possible, by the time we are ready to colonise Mars anyway, to engineer the colonists in such a way as to allow them to thrive in the Martian environment. Possibly even give them immunity to some of the nastier toxicity they are sure to encounter.