Ashes to ashes, dust to dust has always been true on a cosmic scale – everything in our solar system, from the sun to our own humble selves, has its origin in space dust.
Where all the dust that ultimately coalesced into stars, planets, and organic material came from has long been an open question. Now a group of researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope think they may have found a clue
The group is studying a quasar – a type of massive black hole surrounded by a dusty cloud – in a galaxy about 8 billion light years away. In analyzing the infrared light spectrum from the quasar, they found signs of surprising amounts of the minerals that make up glass, sand, marble, and even rubies and sapphires.
Other than glass, these minerals – such as crystalline silicate in the case of sand – are typically signs of relatively young dust, since none of them can survive long in space without being transformed. The conclusion? The black hole itself, or at least the doughnut-shaped cloud around it, seems to be creating new dust.
It's not yet an open-and-shut case. The quasar being studied isn't far enough away to truly replicate conditions in the early history of the universe, when the dust that created the first generation of stars was created. Some scientists believe that much dust was in fact created by an early generation of short-lived stars that went supernova, instead.
But the presence of apparently newly made material in quasar's winds is certainly enough to excite scientists, and spur new speculation about the ultimate sources of our creation.
A paper on the issue will appear in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Astronomers Find Dust in the Wind of Black Holes[NASA JPL press release]
(Image: Artist's conception of dust in the winds of a quasar. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
