Oct. 11, 2007 The hit song that proclaimed, "All we are is dust
in the wind," may have some cosmic truth to it. New findings
from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that space dust --
the same stuff that makes up living creatures and planets -- was
manufactured in large quantities in the winds of black holes
that populated our early universe. The findings are a
significant new clue in an unsolved mystery: where did all the
dust in the young universe originate? "We were surprised to find
what appears to be freshly made dust entrained in the winds that
blow away from supermassive black holes," said Ciska Markwick-
Kemper of the University of Manchester, U.K. Markwick-Kemper is
lead author of a new paper appearing in an upcoming issue of the
Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This could explain where the
dust came from that was needed to make the first generations of
stars in the early universe." Space dust is essential to the
formation of planets, stars, galaxies and even life as we know
it. The dust in our cor