Researchers recreated processes that occur in red giant stars that eventually produce planet-former interstellar dust.
Researchers used the Cosmic Simulation Chamber (COSmIC) recreate space dust grains similar to those that form in the outskirts of dying stars, a NASA news release reported.
These dust grains are ejected into the interstellar medium and after millions of years can lead to the formation of planets.
"The harsh conditions of space are extremely difficult to reproduce in the laboratory, and have long hindered efforts to interpret and analyze observations from space," Farid Salama, project leader and a space science researcher at Ames, said in the news release. "Using the COSmIC simulator we can now discover clues to questions about the composition and the evolution of the universe, both major objectives of NASA's space research program."
Until now researchers were not able to simulate space in a gaseous state, preventing them from identifying certain types of matter.
COSmIC allows scientists to simulate these gaseous environments by expanding gases using a "cold jet spray of argon gas seeded with hydrocarbons that cools down the molecules to temperatures representative of these environments," the news release reported.
COSmICs chamber recreates space conditions that occur when ions and molecules exist in a vacuum.
"By using COSmIC and building up on the work we recently published in the Astrophysical Journal August 29, 2013, we now can for the first time truly recreate and visualize in the laboratory the formation of carbon grains in the envelope of stars and learn about the formation, structure and size distribution of stellar dust grains," Cesar Contreras of the Bay Area Environmental Research (BAER) Institute and a research fellow at Ames, said in the news release. "This type of new research truly pushes the frontiers of science toward new horizons, and illustrates NASA's important contribution to science."
The researchers observed hydrocarbon molecules expand in the jet spray and exposed them to high energy in an electric discharge. The team detected the larger molecules that formed from these seeds and collected the solid grains.
"During COSmIC experiments, we are able to form and detect nanoparticles on the order of 10 nm size, grains ranging from 100-500 nanometers and aggregates of grains up to 1.5 micrometers in diameter, about a tenth the width of a human hair, and observe their structure with SEM, thus sampling a large size distribution of the grains produced," Ella Sciamma-O'Brien, of the BAER Institute and a research fellow at Ames, said in the news release.
This research will help researchers gain insight into the dust around stars, which could help them better-understand how planets form.
"Today we are celebrating a major milestone in our understanding of the formation and the nature of cosmic dust grains that bears important implications in this new era of exoplanets discoveries," Salama said.
