Researchers have found dust from an exploded star in snow from Antarctica, according to a recent study in the Physical Review Letters.
A “supernova” happens when a star explodes -- producing gas and dust enriched with radioisotopes. According to the study, some of that dust from one or more stars fell to Earth sometime in the last 20 million years.
"I'm really glad and happy to actually see something which traveled billions of billions of kilometers through space and is millions of years old," said Dominik Koll, a nuclear astrophysicist who co-authored the study.
Koll told CNN that researchers found the dust after shipping about 1,100 pounds of snow from Antarctica to a research facility in Germany.
According to the cable network, the researchers said they picked the remote area because it had been pretty much untouched and the snow was, “the purest material you can find." The researchers melted and sifted through the snow, and hyper-sensitive equipment was used to detect anything abnormal.
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