Star Dust

This is a track in the gel where dust
impacted the gel at about 13,000 miles
per hour.

o.k. Here's a pretty cool thing. If you want, you can help scientists who sent up a probe to find interstellar dust. They sent up this gizmo with some light as air gel in a tennis racket kind of configuration, initially looking for comet particles, but they also turned it toward interstellar space to possibly find dust that came from beyond our solar system. Interestingly, they sent it up without really knowing how they would get the dust out of the gel once it came back (and how it came back and how they figured out how to get it out is a whole other story.). Interstellar dust is about a millionth of an inch. Pretty beensy. So one of the things they did to find it, and this is where you, the reader whoever you might be, come in. Stardust@home (click on it when you're ready) is a site where you can go help by watching little movies of tracks of particles in the gel!!! There's about 600 people, called "Dusters",  helping to find these little tracks to be able to study these little guys right here on earth. See? Pretty cool, eh?