Alien Space Dust

NASA finds alien dust that moves in different directions, suggesting it came from deep space.

16:27 19 April 2016

Particles of alien dust floating in our solar system were discovered by scientists at NASA. Unlike the dust found on the red planet, the strange dust moves in different directions at high speed, suggesting it came from deep space.

 

The cosmic substance was discovered by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004. As the microscopic dust particles were moving at a rate of 45,000 mph, they easily avoid being trapped by the sun’s gravitation forces.

 

Based on the scientists’ observations, most of the dust came from Saturn’s active moon Enceladus, which has a global ocean and other geographic features.

 

A total of 36 particles where spotted leading scientists to conclude that they came from outside the solar system or the void that exists between stars called interstellar. When analysed, it was revealed that the particles with mysterious qualities were made of minerals.

 

Nicolas Altobelli, Cassini project scientist at the European Space Agency, confirmed that particles had been discovered before.

 

He said: "From that discovery, we always hoped we would be able to detect these interstellar interlopers at Saturn with Cassini. We knew that if we looked in the right direction, we should find them."

 

Frank Postberg of the University of Heidelberg, a co-author of the paper and co-investigator of Cassini's dust analyzer said: "Cosmic dust is produced when stars die, but with the vast range of types of stars in the universe, we naturally expected to encounter a huge range of dust types over the long period of our study."