I know... When I read the article title I thought "this sounds almost as interesting as if they were studying regular house dust." But in reality space dust is the stuff that is acted upon by cosmic pressure to create the giant celestial bodies that actually are interesting.
Another crazy difference in this particular observation is that the scientists from the University of Nottinham will be looking through a telescope that is in space instead of on the ground. Apparently this Herschel Space Observatory has some really impressve telescope as they called it not only "the biggest telescope ever built" (its mirror is twice the size of hubble) but also "the most powerful telescope ever launched into space." Just what does being the biggest, baddest telescope around mean? Well, it can see light in the "sub-millimeter part of the spectrum," light that can't even penetrate the atosphere. And of course it can see stuff that is real far away--millions of light years (remember that the Sun is only about 8 light-minutes away). Anyway scientist studying dust: exciting stuff happening in Astronomy.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080201102237.htm
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