Talk:Cosmic dust

message: As an astronomer beginner with school science training, I expected this article to tell me what star dust is actually made of. Which atoms or molecules? Which isotopes of them? If it can be a huge variety, what is that variety? It isn't particularly clear that it even is made of atoms rather than fundamental particles in some other form.
This made it a really frustrating article! I'm reading it while getting background info while reading a kids book about how stars are made. I'd already learnt more about deuterium, which is a freaky thing from a day to day point of view (heavy water!). So I expect this star dust to be freaky too by default, plus I have no idea what dust on earth is made of.
In short, the opening sentence defining "star dust" as being "all dust in the cosmos" is completely unhelpful if you don't know what "dust" means in an astronomical context! It isn't the same as house dust, right, as that is made of human skin :) Francis Irving (talk)
: Cosmic dust is mostly small pieces of rock and ice. That would include things that rock and ice are made of - hydrogen, oxygen, silicon, iron, nickel, etc. There are many more, but just think of all the elements in rock on Earth. Jsaur (talk) 15:35, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: What atoms is it made of?

message: Seems like a good idea. I'll go ahead and do it when I get the chance, unless I hear otherwise. --Guinnog 00:14, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge

message: There was a large number of conceptual errors from the merge result related to type of cosmic dust and their locations, and an unbalanced amount of information reflecting the variety of dust collection efforts (past 40 years and into the future) and the author who made the merge still did not give references for the images. I corrected these and tried to make the new dust detection section more balanced. However, I do not think that the new images from the merge should be in this article without a complete reference to the source of the image and a full description.Amara 21:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but I'd bet my first-born child it's not because of cosmic dust. Stebbins 21:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Agreed Stebbins, completely, but also, I think there's a trend of finding what are thought to be new microbes in old specimens. Regardless of all that though, Googling: apparent biological material in space, yields quite a list of peer-reviewed papers supplemented by news reports. Bob Enyart, Denver KGOV radio host  (talk) 16:06, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge result

message: Is it possible to create an article stub just on Dust lanes; I think that the term can be independent enough to merit a stub. I am unsure how to request said page on the Astronomy Portal. —ScouterSig 19:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dust lanes 

message: Do we know how much cosmic dust is falling onto the Moon? There is an article at AnswersInGenesis.org which quotes a lot of sources and numbers, but since it's a Creationist website (lumping evolution in with cosmology and astronomy, among other other logical errors), I doubt that it could be considered a reliable source. | Loadmaster (talk) 23:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moon dust 

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Porous_chondriteIDP.jpg
Very clear image.  What was the substrate for the image?  
(I did read the talk page guidelines and I did read the bit about four tildes, but it confused me)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.50.1.87 (talk) 02:15, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image comments 

message: 207.75.81.12 (talk) 18:27, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No, dust is not cold gas - except insofar as everything becomes gas when you heat it up enough: in that sense even you are 'cold gas'.  John Baez (talk) 14:18, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for definative statement of origin:  Is Dust actually cold gas? 

message: Right now the article says "The detection of cosmic dust points to another facet of cosmic dust research: dust acting as photons".  What does that mean???  Dust can't act like photons.
:I think that was a poor WP:OR. I deleted it. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:28, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dust as photons 

message: In reading the lede, I see four problems which I think need to be fixed.
1) 10^-6 x dust grain/... Since when are units of measure explicitly multiplied by the numerical value? Is it 100 x mph ? Or 300,000 x km/sec ? That is definitely not standard scientific notation, but even worse it is confusing.
2) "each having a mass of approximately 10^-17 kg.[1]" The reference given is to a non-peer reviewed (if I understand correctly) paper by Matloff et al which bases its claim on a (non-peer reviewed) book BY THE SAME AUTHOR. I also note both of these works are of a highly speculative nature (so having problematic authoratativeness) The real issue I have is that we KNOW that there is a particle size distribution, so the use of a single metric (what is it? order of magnitude for the mean? median? mode?) is just bad form. If the statement were true, it would be an astounding unimodal distribution, but I doubt it's true. How about something like "X% of interstellar dust grains fall between 10^-Y and 10^-Z kg, based on ____."?
3) "by one estimate, as much as 40,000 tons of cosmic dust..." My understanding (from wikipedia) is that estimates range between 10,000 and 50,000 TONNES (not tons), so while it may be true that one estimate pegs it at 36,000 tonnes, wouldn't a range be a better indicator of the possible magnitude (as well as indicating our uncertainty)?
4)"In October 2011, scientists reported that cosmic dust contains complex organic matter ..." The report actually said that [post-hoc] spectroscopic analysis of interstellar and circumstellar dust spectra was consistent with mixed [complex] aromatic-aliphatic spectra. There's quite a difference between claims of detection and claims of evidence supporting the existence of. IMHO, the word "probably" or "likely" should be added:"In October 2011, scientists reported that cosmic dust PROBABLY contains complex organic matter ..."
5)One last thing: The dust in the early universe can NOT have the same composition (both elemental and particle size) as the modern universe. As the lede mentions, location is an important parameter when discussing cosmic dust; but so is time/age. I think it should be mentioned, as well as where we have not yet observed dust (on the cosmological scale; voids, filaments, superclusters, I think clusters have dust associated with them?...)Abitslow (talk) 21:04, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lede - edit requests 

message: Might it improve the article to add a separate section on the origin of cosmic dust? There are a few origin statements in the Stardust section and that section does link to Main article: Presolar grains, but that article also lacks a separate Origin of presolar grains section that could provide more focus on details of how these dust grains may have formed. Thoughts? Bob Enyart, Denver KGOV radio host  (talk) 16:14, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  A separate section: Origin of cosmic dust? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: 36 grains detected and analysed according to Cassini captures dust from beyond the Solar System reporting on Science - Rod57 (talk) 12:43, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cassini detects interstellar dust 

message: "Study and importance"
4th Sentence
"cosmic dust can drive the mass loss when a star is nearing the end of its life"
What is this, "drive the mass loss"?
This phrase is ambiguous.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:1970:59A4:6100:8865:8DD7:591E:9B2F (talk) 05:55, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Driving the Mass Loss

message: I added this new comment here instead of at the bottom of the page because it should be resolved along with the previous comment.
Re the sentence:
"The dust density falling to Earth is approximately 10−6/m3 with each grain having a mass between 10−16kg (0.1 pg) and 10−4 kg (100 mg).[3][4]"
If it is truly dust density falling to earth, it needs a unit of time to go with it, e.g., maybe 10-6/m3/sec (meaning 10 -6 particles per meter cubed per second (if second is the appropriate unit of time).  (Well, actually, I think it should be 10-6/m2/sec, see below, and note, I am not thinking real well right now (too early in the morning), to normalize that unit, I'm not sure whether it should be 10-6/m2-sec, but I think that is correct.)
On the other hand (I didn't try to read the references), maybe the sentence was intended to describe the density of the dust cloud through which the earth is moving, in which case the wording of the sentence should be changed (to something like what I just said, i.e., "The density of the dust cloud through which the earth is moving is ...".
((this is "below) From that, someone could calculate the particles falling on the surface of the earth (measured in square meters per some unit time (second??)).
I guess after writing all this, I decided to go back and change wording in that sentence in the article -- I think it is a step forward and can be corrected to add the time unit if my "correction" is wrong.
Rhkramer (talk) 12:08, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: There is density (mass per volume), and there is falling rate (mass per time).  I suggest to quote the paper and not make further calculations in the introduction. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 14:35, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dust Density falling to earth needs a time associated with it 

message: New studies (2/18/2024) seem to provide support for the notion that panspermia may have been a way that life began on Earth? - Comments Welcome - iac - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 18:46, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Cosmic dust|Cosmic dust particles]] spread life to [[Earth]] - and elsewhere?