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Ed Yeates ReportingThe scientific world is all abuzz about some rare stuff from outer space that was dumped in our own backyard. A lab at Washington University is the first to find real stardust in that spacecraft that dropped into Utah's western desert earlier this year.
There was a reason why NASA called its seven year journey to a comet STARDUST. As it passed by the comet, Wild 2, at 15-thousand miles per hour, the spacecraft reached out and collected little tiny particles. In January of this year the cargo capsule from that spacecraft plummeted right on target into Utah's western desert.
Scientists hoped a bit of real stardust might be among the comet's debris, and it was, in the discovery announced this week.
Dr. Frank Stadermann, Senior Research Scientist, Washington University: "The comet really contains a memory of this time in its particles, and we only have to analyze these particles to get the memory out of that dust sample."
It was in the bigness of the sophisticated equipment at Washington University where scientists observed stardust in a particle grabbed from the comet's memory.
Seth Jarvis, Director, Clark Planetarium: "Rarer than anything that exists on the planet. From a scientific point of view, it's more valuable than diamond itself."
Valuable because this speck of dust came not from our solar system but somewhere else. For the thousands of visitors who visit the Clark planetarium, it's mind boggling enough to think of the age of our own sun, our own solar system, but this piece of stardust.
Seth Jarvis: "These little teeny, tiny particles, a tiny, tiny fraction of the human hair contain crystals of molecules that require high temperatures and high pressure. That means they had to be formed in the vicinity of a star."
Not our own, but from another, older sun forming in another solar system far, far away, a long time ago.
