Speaker
Description
After decades of failures and misunderstandings, scientists have solved a cosmic riddle — what happens to the tons of dust particles that hit the Earth every day but seldom if ever get discovered in the places that humans know best, like buildings and parking lots, sidewalks and park benches. The answer? Nothing. Look harder. The tiny flecks are everywhere, all over the roof. The morphology of these flecks - micrometeorites - is a first hint of their extraterrestrial origin, the determination of their chemical makeup is the decisive making body. But how is that cosmic dust formed? What important clues on stellar evolution are hidden in these extraterrestrial flecks? What do these microscopic samples supported by astronomical observations tell us about the future evolution of our own Sun, and how life on Earth might change in a few billion years from now? In this talk, I will discuss how interdisciplinary research linking astronomy and chemistry – `astrochemistry’ – can reveal the true formation pathways of these little grains, thereby combining the four fundamental axes of (astro)physical research: theory, observations, numerical models, and laboratory experiments. During this talk, I will specifically highlight the crucial role of ALMA observations in disclosing the nucleation histories of ageing Sun-like stars.
| Session | Dust and presolar grains |
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