CNN - Meteorites carry stardust

Meteorites carry stardust memories billions of years old

March 19, 1996
Web posted at: 7:10 a.m. EST

From Correspondent Don Knapp

STANFORD, California (CNN) -- Chemistry researchers have found a way to look at stars without a telescope. It's a whole new way of looking at the past.

Like messengers from the past, ancient rocks traveling in interstellar space carry secrets of the universe. Some, locked in stone, reach earth in meteorites. Now, scientists have begun to crack their secrets.

"What we're learning, of course, is a record of the same time when the solar system was formed. It's a bit like archaeology. It's like a dig," said professor Dick Zare of Stanford University

Zare and his fellow scientists have found a kind of interstellar smog -- polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Something akin to diesel exhaust or candle soot, it's stardust that hitched a ride on a meteor.

"It's a new say to study all types of things. What was out there four and a half billion years ago, and far way," said Zare.

Washington University, St. Louis researcher Scott Messenger extracted the stardust from meteorites with acid. Stanford researchers Simon Clemett, and Xavier Chillier zapped it with two lasers.

"The laser beam heats up these particles and causes them to evaporate, to outgas," explained Zare. "A second laser beam intercepts the plume of gas that streams out of these particles and charges of them into ions." (111K AIFF sound or 111K WAV sound)

Researchers use the ion's weight to identify the stardust.

"I believe they're actually star dust," said Zare. "Ejecta from other stars incorporated into the meteorite that's now come to us."

So far the exotic carbon molecules raise more questions than they answer.

"Is there life out there? Because that's one of the things we keep asking when we look at the universe. Are we alone?" asks Zare, posing one of the great questions of the universe. (68K AIFF sound or 68K WAV sound)

Zare says meteorites allow scientists to study the stars without a telescope and without traveling through space. Reason enough, he says, for NASA to send more research funds his way.

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Meteorites carry stardust memories billions of years old

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