Ask Ethan: Where does cosmic dirt come from?|by Ethan Siegel|Starts With A Bang!|Sep, 2025

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Dark, dusty molecular clouds, like Barnard 59, component of the Pipe Galaxy, appear prominent as they shut out the light from history things: stars, heated gas, and light-reflecting product. These dark clouds are made up of cosmic dust, and there’s an enormous amount of all of it throughout the Universe. It was only recently, since 2016, that astronomers had the ability to piece together the origin of this cosmic dirt. ( Credit : ESO)

Dirt is ubiquitous in the modern Cosmos, appearing in almost all galaxies. Yet our universes was born dust-free. So where does it stem?

If you wish to see deep space, you have to do more than just open your eyes. Despite the advantage of large, effective telescopes, also from much above the limitations of Planet’s ambience in space, there are still massive portions of deep space that are virtually undetectable to our optical telescopes. The reason why? Due to the fact that enormous parts of deep space are obstructed by cosmic dust: small, cool grains of atom-based matter that absorbs and blocks the noticeable wavelengths of light that human eyes have adapted to see. They obscure massive regions of the stellar aircraft, and prevent our capability to observe star-forming regions, planet-forming disks, and items that lie behind and beyond the airplane of the Galaxy.

Certain, we have actually developed several methods, like multi-wavelength astronomy (specifically at longer wavelengths), to aid peer via that cosmic dirt, and to recognize the items that exist both inside and behind it, however the presence of planetary dust itself has been a historical problem for astronomers. Today’s Ask Ethan concern originates from Secondary school educator Allan Clark, that was puzzled by its …

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