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   https://phys.org/news/2026-02-student-cosmic-lab-life-earth.html   
      
   A Sydney Ph.D. student has recreated a tiny piece   
   of the universe inside a bottle in her laboratory,   
   producing cosmic dust from scratch. The results   
   shed new light on how the chemical building blocks   
   of life may have formed long before Earth existed.   
   Linda Losurdo, a Ph.D. candidate in materials and   
   plasma physics in the School of Physics, used a   
   simple mix of gases—nitrogen, carbon dioxide and   
   acetylene—to mimic the harsh and dynamic   
   environments around stars and supernova remnants.   
      
   By subjecting these gases to intense electrical   
   energy, she generated carbon-rich "cosmic dust"   
   similar to the material found drifting between   
   stars and embedded in comets, asteroids and   
   meteorites. Her results are published in The   
   Astrophysical Journal.   
   ...   
      
   https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae2bfe   
   Carbonaceous Cosmic Dust Analogs Distinguish   
   between Ion Bombardment and Temperature   
      
      
   Abstract   
   Carbonaceous cosmic dust is formed in the circumstellar envelopes of   
   asymptotic giant branch stars and supernovae ejecta. Reprocessed   
   carbonaceous cosmic dust, abundant in the light elements C, H, O, and N   
   is found in asteroids and comets. These elements form dust that is well   
   described as an amorphous, covalently bonded network solid with a   
   structure that is expected to reflect the key formative influences of   
   ion bombardment, temperature modification, and UV irradiation. Ion   
   bombardment of a dust grain by an energetic particle in a stellar wind   
   creates a nonequilibrium thermal spike event, which contrasts with the   
   close-to-equilibrium process of annealing under the local ambient   
   conditions. There is a gap in our knowledge of how to distinguish ion   
   bombardment as a synthesis process from postsynthesis thermal   
   modification through infrared spectroscopy. Here we synthesize dust from   
   molecular precursors under a range of controlled space-like conditions   
   to form a database of IR spectra. We apply principal component analysis   
   to show that the first principal component correlates with ion   
   bombardment intensity during synthesis and the second principal   
   component correlates with annealing temperature. The spectral loading   
   curves of these two principal components are proposed as potential   
   diagnostic tools to uncover past formative influences on cosmic dust as   
   well as on the carbonaceous content of asteroids such as Bennu and   
   Ryugu. Amorphous organic networks composed of the CHON elements unify   
   previous ideas on cosmic dust by encompassing features of PAHs, tholins,   
   and mixed aliphatic–aromatic nanoparticles.   
      
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