A student made cosmic dust in her lab—what she found could help us understand how life started on Earth

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.