{"id":2772,"date":"2014-08-14T14:10:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T19:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2772"},"modified":"2014-08-14T11:13:28","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T16:13:28","slug":"citizen-scientists-help-find-pieces-of-deep-space-stardust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/citizen-scientists-help-find-pieces-of-deep-space-stardust\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizen scientists help find pieces of deep space stardust<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2769\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/77493_web.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2769\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2769\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/77493_web.jpg\" alt=\"This crater, about 280 nanometres across, is one of the tracks left behind by pieces of interstellar debris that hit aluminum foil in NASA\u2019s Stardust probe. Other particles, captured in an aerogel, were found by an army of volunteer \u2018citizen scientists.\u2019 The composition of the particles is consistent with the theory that they are ejected by stars and left to float around in the vastness of space. (Photo credit: Rhonda Stroud, Naval Research Laboratory)\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/77493_web.jpg 400w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/77493_web-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/77493_web-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/77493_web-268x268.jpg 268w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2769\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This crater, about 280 nanometres across, is one of the tracks left behind by pieces of interstellar debris that hit aluminum foil in NASA\u2019s Stardust probe. Other particles, captured in an aerogel, were found by an army of volunteer \u2018citizen scientists.\u2019 The composition of the particles is consistent with the theory that they are ejected by stars and left to float around in the vastness of space. (Photo credit: Rhonda Stroud, Naval Research Laboratory)<\/p><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Particles discovered by volunteers sifting through photos from NASA\u2019s Stardust spacecraft are very likely dust from the vast space between stars, according to a new paper. The particles were collected by exposing a soft absorbent material called an aerogel to the vastness of space.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> When the spacecraft returned to earth, the aerogel was photographed under a microscope and the pictures distributed to an army of volunteers who looked for tracks made by impacting particles. Most were debris from the spacecraft itself, but in 2010, <\/span><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/2010\/100303\/full\/news.2010.106.html\" target=\"_blank\">researchers reported that<\/a><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> Bruce Hudson of Midland, Ontario had found two very promising specimens. <\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The latest paper reports that the composition of these particles, along with five others, is consistent with what scientists expect interstellar dust to look like, though there is much more variety among them than previously thought.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/lookup\/doi\/10.1126\/science.1252496\" target=\"_blank\"><span>Original research paper<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in\u00a0the journal\u00a0<em>Science\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>August 14, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Andrew Westphal, University of California at Berkeley, USA<\/span><\/h4>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Bruce Hudson, Citizen Scientist, Midland, Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Particles discovered by volunteers sifting through photos from NASA\u2019s Stardust spacecraft are very likely dust from the vast space between stars, according to a new paper. The particles were collected by exposing a soft absorbent material called an aerogel to the vastness of space. When the spacecraft returned to earth, the aerogel was photographed under [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[2121,1349,50,533],"class_list":["post-2772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-citizen-science","tag-nasa","tag-ontario","tag-space"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/77493_web.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-II","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2773,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2772\/revisions\/2773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}