Dust worms hold the key to planet formation
Maggie McKee

19:08 13 July 04

Elongated dust worms - rather than fluffy blobs of dust - are the seeds of
planet formation, new microgravity experiments have shown.

The research sheds light on the way planets condense from dusty clouds, when
electrostatic forces hold sway over gravity.

Jürgen Blum of the Technical University in Braunschweig, Germany and Maya
Krause a graduate student at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany,
have just published the results of experiments performed aboard an unmanned
rocket that spent six minutes in microgravity in 1999.

The experiments showed that dust particles seem to grow in long strings as
opposed to clumps, as originally thought. "They are the first realistic
simulations of the initiation of a planet's growth," Blum told New
Scientist. The work follows research led by Blum that studied how dust
clumped together on a space shuttle flight in 1998.

Read the rest at NewScietist
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996149

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