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Dust around nearby star has fluffiness of new-fallen 'powder' snow

A nearby star only 12 million years old is surrounded by a dusty disk reminiscent of the disk from which the Earth and other planets formed more than 4.5 billion years ago. Peering into this dusty disk, UC Berkeley astronomers have found that the dust is as fluffy as powder snow. This suggests that planetary disks condense gently into fluffy dust grains up to the size of snowballs before coalescing into asteroids and planets.

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Keywords: dust, star, fluffiness, new-fallen, powder, snow, new, fallen

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