Catch a falling star: cosmic dust may reveal how life began, and a Sydney lab is making it from scratch

Recreating cosmic dust may help answer questions about how meteorites hitting Earth came to contain the organic matter that they do

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How does one acquire star dust? One option, as the Perry Como song suggests, is to catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, so to speak: thousands of tonnes of cosmic dust bombard the Earth each year, mostly vaporising in the atmosphere.

The asteroid and comet fragments that don't burn up - known as meteorites and micrometeorites if they hit Earth - provide scientists with valuable clues about the cosmos. It's why planetary scientists in the UK, kitted in ghostbusters-like vacuum backpacks, have scoured cathedral roofs for microscopic specks of the space stuff.