Related papers: Carbon Star Dust from Meteorites
We discuss the connection between the chemistry of dense interstellar clouds and those characteristics of cometary matter that could be remnants of it. The chemical evolution observed to occur in molecular clouds is summarized and a model…
In this chapter we review the astrophysical origins of Earth's carbon, starting from the products of the Big Bang and culminating with the Earth's formation. We review the measured compositions of different primitive objects including…
In this paper we discuss the propagation of dust through the interstellar medium (ISM), and describe the destructive effects of stellar winds, jets, and supernova shock waves on interstellar dust. We review the probability that grains…
Models of terrestrial planet formation predict that the final stages of planetary assembly, lasting tens of millions of years beyond the dispersal of young protoplanetary disks, are dominated by planetary collisions. It is through these…
Carbon monoxide (CO) is the primary tracer for interstellar clouds where stars form, yet CO has never been detected in galaxies with an Oxygen abundance relative to Hydrogen less than 20% of solar, even though such low metallicity galaxies…
The past century of interstellar dust has brought us from first ignoring it to finding that it plays an important role in the evolution of galaxies. Current observational results in our galaxy provide a complex physical and chemical…
Our Solar System originated in interstellar gas and dust; the latter is in the form of amorphous silicate particles and carbonaceous dust. The composition of cometary material shows that a significant fraction of the amorphous silicates was…
Meteorites are classified as either non-carbonaceous- (NC) or carbonaceous (CC), representing bodies that likely formed in the inner- or outer solar system, respectively. Despite its location in the inner solar system, the Earth is thought…
Observations have demonstrated that supernovae efficiently produce dust. This is consistent with the hypothesis that supernovae and asymptotic giant branch stars are the primary producers of dust in the Universe. However, there has been a…
We consider a small sample of oxygen-rich, asymptotic giant branch stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope, exhibiting a peculiar spectral energy distribution, which can be hardly explained by the common…
% context {Nano-diamonds are an enticing and enigmatic dust component yet their origin is still unclear. They have been unequivocally detected in only a few astronomical objects, yet they are the most abundant of the pre-solar grains, both…
Carbon stars have been and are extensively studied, given their complex internal structure and their peculiar chemical composition, which make them living laboratories to test stellar structure and evolution theories of evolved stars. They…
Dust is formed in the expanding atmosphere during late stages of stellar evolution. Dust influences the dynamics and thermodynamics of the stellar atmosphere by its opacity. The dust opacity depends both on the optical properties of the…
Carbon macromolecules are intermediates between small gas-phase species and larger dust structures. I illustrate how observations and dedicated laboratory experiments support this picture.
Rocky asteroids and planets display nucleosynthetic isotope variations that are attributed to the heterogeneous distribution of stardust from different stellar sources in the solar protoplanetary disk. Here we report new high precision…
Tiny meteoroids entering the Earth's atmosphere and inducing meteor showers have long been thought to originate partly from cometary dust. Together with other dust particles, they form a huge cloud around the Sun, the zodiacal cloud. From…
Crystalline silicates are found in a large number of comets. These pose a long-standing conundrum for solar system formation models as they can only be created in the inner hot disk at temperatures higher than 800 K, and there is no obvious…
Chondrules are millimeter-sized silicate spherules ubiquitous in primitive meteorites, but whose origin remains mysterious. One of the main proposed mechanisms for producing them is melting of solids in shock waves in the gaseous…
Although dust is widely found in astrophysics, forming dust is surprisingly difficult. The proper combination of low temperature (<2000 K) and high density is mainly found in the winds of late-type giant and supergiant stars which, as a…
Measurements by dust detectors on interplanetary spacecraft appear to indicate a substantial flux of interstellar particles with masses exceeding 10^{-12}gram. The reported abundance of these massive grains cannot be typical of interstellar…