A Fluorescent Aerogel for Capture and Identification of Interplanetary and Interstellar Dust

Abstract

Contemporary interstellar dust has never been analyzed in the laboratory, despite its obvious astronomical importance and its potential as a probe of stellar nucleosynthesis and galactic chemical evolution. Here we report the discovery of a novel fluorescent aerogel which is capable of capturing hypervelocity dust grains and passively recording their kinetic energies. An array of these "calorimetric" aerogel collectors in low earth orbit would lead to the capture and identification of large numbers of interstellar dust grains.