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Big news from Stardust

Scientists announced that Stardust sample exceeds all expectations with the big ones seen from 10 feet away..

A preliminary estimation is that there might be more than a million microscopic specks of dust embedded in Stardust’s aerogel-laden collector. Furthermore, it appears — from the size of the carrot-shaped impact tracks in the aerogel — that there are about 10 particles of 100 microns in size. (A typical human hair is about 100 microns thick.)

The largest is around a millimeter, Brownlee added, and the biggest track is nearly large enough to insert your little finger. In the largest aerogel tracks, investigators can see the black comet dust at the end of the track.

The research team will spend about a week photographing the collector and examining it under a microscope before they begin the painstaking process of extracting particles, most of which are less than one-fifth the diameter of a hair.

posted by: kyawoo at 20:39 | link | comments |
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