THE DUST
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According to a relatively new theory, disk instability, clumps of dust and gas are bound together early in the life of the solar system. Over time, these clumps slowly compact into a giant planet. These planets can form faster than their core accretion rivals, sometimes in as little as a thousand years, allowing them to trap the rapidly-vanishing lighter gases. They also quickly reach an orbit-stabilizing mass that keeps them from death-marching into the sun.
Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Both secular science and the Scriptures state that man was formed from dust. The big bang theory, more or less, holds that planet earth and all its life forms developed from stardust, while the biblical account states that man was formed by God from the dust of the earth, which he also created (and woman from the rib of Adam). And in yet another similarity, both worldviews state that man returns to dust.
Dust consists of particles in the atmosphere that come from various sources such as soil, dust lifted by weather (an aeolian process), volcanic eruptions, and pollution. Dust in homes, offices, and other human environments contains small amounts of plant pollen, human and animal hairs, textile fibers, paper fibers, minerals from outdoor soil, human skin cells, burnt meteorite particles, and many other materials which may be found in the local environment.
Some of the particles are small enough that they can float in the air, and we can get them into our lungs. Others are larger and tend to sink to the ground. Some are simple, made of only a single organic or inorganic compound. Others are complex.
ers, minerals from outdoor soil, human skin cells, burnt meteorite particles, and many other materials which may be found in the local environment.
A close-up composite image of a dust particle. The green patches contain bromine, calcium and/or iron.
Bromine (Br ) deep-red, oily liquid extracted from sea water
Calcium (Ca) silvery white, soft metal essential to all living things Calcium phosphate is the main component of bone
Iron (Fe) is an element in period 4, between manganese and cobalt. Iron is probably the most well-known element in period 4, being the most common element in the earth and a major component of steel. Iron-56 has the lowest energy density of any isotope of any element, meaning that it is the most massive element that can be produced in supergiant stars. Iron also has some applications in the human body; hemoglobin is partly iron.
A period 4 element is one of the chemical elements in the fourth row (or period) of the periodic table of the elements. The periodic table is laid out in rows to illustrate recurring (periodic) trends in the chemical behaviour of the elements as their atomic number increases: a new row is begun when chemical behaviour begins to repeat, meaning that elements with similar behaviour fall into the same vertical columns. The fourth period contains 18 elements, beginning with potassium and ending with krypton. As a rule, period 4 elements fill their 4s shells first, then their 3d and 4p shells, in that order.
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Journey of dust
The vast space between the planets, moons and stars hold trillions of specks of dust. These grains are few and far between. And they are too small to see with the naked eye. But they are fast. They shoot through space as quickly as 400 kilometers (250 miles) per second. That’s hundreds of times faster than a bullet. Importantly, they hold lots of information about places far, far away.
Scientists have known that outer space is filled with flying dust.
Some of this stray dust is likely older than Earth. It is leftover debris from the stuff that clumped together more than four billion years ago to form Earth and the other planets. Other dust comes from newer sources. Meteors kicked it into space when they smacked into planets or moons.
The solar system is a dusty environment, with trillions of cosmic dust particles left behind by comets and asteroids that orbit the sun. All this dust forms a relatively dense cloud through which Earth travels, sweeping up the interplanetary dust particles very effectively.
Cosmic dust enters Earth's atmosphere. It has been estimated that between 3 and 300 tons of particles enters our planet's atmosphere on a daily basis.
Space is one of three sources of dust on Earth. The other two main sources are your home (dead skin cells, pollen, dust mites, and more), and dry, arid places like deserts.
One-third of the land on Earth is covered by dust-producing surfaces.
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong observed stars at different evolutionary phases and found that they are able to produce complex organic compounds and eject them into space, filling the regions between stars.
Much chemical complexity was thought to arise only from living organisms, but the results of the new study show that these organic compounds can be created in space even when no life forms are present. In fact, such complex organics could be produced naturally by stars, and at an extremely rapid pace.
Most of the material that we're made of comes out of dying stars, or stars that died in explosions. And those stellar explosions continue. We have stuff in us as old as the universe, and then some stuff that landed here maybe only a hundred years ago. And all of that mixes in our bodies.