'And so by seeing these particles, one of the things we're trying to look at is, can we say anything about conditions before the particle was built into this comet?'

'We always talk about comets as being this treasure chest of goodies from the early solar system, where hopefully things have been kept, if not unchanged, then at least as unchanged as you might hope for over several billion years,' Bentley said. But those particles' structure could have been distorted by their long journey into the atmosphere, and thus don't paint as clear a picture as something snagged right from a comet itself.Ĭomets - and therefore comet dust - offer insight into early solar system conditions, when dust around the sun first began to come together into what would eventually form the planets. The particles, especially E, are similar to a type of large, fluffy dust particle found in Earth's upper atmosphere, which researchers have theorized originate from comets passing near Earth. The particles' structures suggest that they're all built up of incredibly tiny grains, which form in a hierarchical way - a bunch of extremely tiny particles join together into a bigger particle as they tumble through space, which joins with a bunch of similar-size particles into an even bigger one, and so on. Although it's still smaller than a human hair, it's surprisingly large and fluffy with an intriguing topography. The Rosetta orbiter plucked this comet dust particle, called Particle E, from near the comet 67P.

Dust scarpetta