Herschel helps solve mystery of cosmic dust origins
Thursday, July 7, 2011 - 15:31
in Astronomy & Space
New observations from the infrared Herschel Space Observatory reveal that an exploding star expelled the equivalent of between 160,000 and 230,000 Earth masses of fresh dust. This enormous quantity suggests that exploding stars, called supernovae, are the answer to the long-standing puzzle of what supplied our early universe with dust.