Microscopic dust particles have been detected in Earth’s meteoritic material, particles that have probably formed in stellar explosions that took place much before the formation of the sun.

The focus of ongoing experimental nuclear physics research at Michigan State University’s the National Superconducting Cyclotron laboratory is that whether some of the particles of stardust, called ‘pre-solar grains’, belonged to classical nova explosions or not.

The research has led to exciting subatomic hints regarding these grains’ origin. The results have now appeared in the journal Physical Review Letters. The lead author of the paper is Michael Bennett, an MSU doctoral student at the NSCL.

Bennett and his team has been investigating whether the formation of the particles could have taken place in a classical nova, a thermonuclear explosion on the surface of a tiny star, belonging to a binary star system, wherein two stars orbit each other.

The explosion would have led to the ejection of stellar material in the gas and dust formed in area between stars in the galaxy. A part of this material would have been used in our solar system formation.

Christopher Wrede, assistant professor of physics at MSU and spokesperson for the experiment, said, “There is a recycling process going on here. When stars die, they spew out material in the form of dust and gas, which then gets recycled into future generations of stars and planets”.

To get more information regarding this old question, Wrede along with his team at the NSCL conducted an experiment wherein they formed and examined the exotic radioactive nuclei, having the maximum influence on the creation of silicon isotopes in novae.

They found that the stardust grains contained strangely high amounts of the isotope silicon-30, composed of 14 protons and 16 neutrons. On our planet, Silicon-30 is very rare.