An unaccounted for source of space dust which spawns life in the universe has been identified by an international team of scientists.

They report in Science Express that Type II supernovae ñ where a massive star comes to the end of its life and releases its cataclysmic energy ñ are the culprits.

Space dust is composed of small particles, made of elements such as carbon, silicon, magnesium, iron and oxygen, which are the building blocks from which the earth was made. Until recently, it was thought that this dust was mainly formed by old sun-like stars known as red giants. But the amount of dust found in young galaxies in the early universe seems unlikely to be due to old stars.

Supernovae produced by short-lived massive stars have long been suspected as the dust factories but they are fairly rare events that only happen approximately once every hundred years in a galaxy, making it harder for researchers to find and analyse whether dust is formed in their aftermath.

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope allowed the researchers to peer further into the universe, allowing them to observe a supernova whose explosion was discovered in 2003 in the spiral galaxy Messier 74, which is approximately 30 million light-years away. Their results suggest for the first time that dust can form efficiently in supernovae, using up about five per cent of the heavy elements available.

Professor Mike Barlow, of the UCL Department of Physics & Astronomy and one of the authors of the study, says: “Dust particles in space are the building blocks of comets, planets and life, yet our knowledge of where this dust was made is still incomplete. These new observations show that supernovae can make a major contribution to enriching the dust content of the universe.”

The researchers used the space-based Spitzer and Hubble telescopes and the ground-based Gemini North Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The study was led by Dr Ben Sugerman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and members of the Survey for the Evolution of Emission from Dust in Supernovae (SEEDS) collaboration, which is led by Professor Barlow.

Although researchers have detected many supernovae in the past at visible wavelengths, supernova 2003gd is only one of three in the universe that have been seen at infrared wavelengths producing dust. Supernovae dim and expand into space fairly quickly, so scientists require extremely sensitive telescopes to study them even a few months after the initial explosion. While astronomers have suspected that most supernovae do produce dust, their ability to study this dust production in the past has been limited by technology.

As dust condenses in supernova ejections it produces three observable phenomena: (1) emission at infrared wavelengths; (2) an increase in obscuration of the supernova’s light at visible wavelengths; (3) greater obscuration by the newly formed dust of emission from gas that is expanding away from us, on the far side of the supernova, than from gas expanding towards us, at the front of the supernova.

“One of the difficulties in trying to detect infrared emissions from distant galaxies is the extreme sensitivity of the detectors to heat from other sources,” explains Professor Barlow.

“Infrared is primarily heat radiation, so the Spitzer Space Telescope must be cooled to near absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius) so that it can observe infrared signals from space without interference from the telescope’s own heat.”

Infrared measurements of supernova 2003gd made 500-700 days after the outburst revealed emission consistent with newly formed cooling dust. Sophisticated modelling of the observed infrared emission and of the measured obscuration at visible wavelengths implied that solid dust particles equivalent to up to seven thousand earth masses had formed.

Dr Ben Sugerman, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore who led the study, says: “People have suspected for 40 years that supernovae could be producers of dust, but the technology to confirm this has only recently become available. The advantage of using Spitzer is that we can actually see the warm dust as it forms.”

Professor Robert Kennicutt, of the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy and a co-author of the study, added: “These results provide an impressive demonstration of how Spitzer observations of supernovae can provide unique new insights into the processes that produce dust in the universe.”

Notes to editors

The paper, ‘Massive-Star Supernovae as Major Dust Factories’ will appear in the June 8 Science Express edition of the journal Science. The authors are:

Ben E. K. Sugerman (1), Barbara Ercolano (2), Michael J. Barlow (2), Alexander. G. G. M. Tielens (3), Geoffrey C. Clayton (4), Albert A. Zijlstra (5) Margaret Meixner (1), Angela Speck (6), Tim M. Gledhill (7), Nino Panagia (1), Martin Cohen (8), Karl D. Gordon (9) , Martin Meyer (1), Joanna Fabbri (2), Janet. E. Bowey (2) Douglas L. Welch (10), Michael W. Regan (1), Robert C. Kennicutt, Jr.(11)

(1) Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr., Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

(2 ) Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK

(3)Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, Netherlands

(4)Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA

(5)School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK

(6)Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, University of Missouri, 316 Physics, Columbia, MO 65211,USA

(7) Dept. of Physics, Astronomy, and Maths, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield

AL10 9AB, UK

(8) Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy, 200 Eighth Street, Marina, CA 93933, USA

(9) Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721,USA

(10) Dept. of Physics and Astronomy,McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4M1, Canada

(11) Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HA, UK

For further information, please contact:

Judith H Moore

UCL Media Relations

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7679 7678

Mobile: +44 (0)77333 075 96

Out-of-hours: +44 (0)7917 271 364

Email: judith.moore@ucl.ac.uk

Professor Mike Barlow

UCL Department of Physics & Astronomy

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7679 7160

Email: mjb@star.ucl.ac.uk

Dr Ben Sugerman

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore

Email: sugerman@stsci.edu

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer

Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology. JPL is a division of Caltech.

About UCL

Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government’s most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence.

UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2005 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi (Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954, former Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s, inventor of the telephone); and members of the band Coldplay.