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Who knew dust could become Earth?

You know sand can become glass, but did you know that it might also become planets? In a study that sheds light on how Earth-like planets may form, astronomers found the first evidence of small sandy particles orbiting a newborn solar system at about the same distance as the Earth orbits the sun. Rice astronomer Christopher Johns-Krull and other study co-authors in the United States, Germany and Uzbekistan used reflected light from the sand itself to confirm the Earth-like orbit of grainy particles around a young star in the constellation Monoceros. “Precisely how and when planets form is an open question,” said Johns-Krull. “We believe the disk-shaped clouds of dust around newly formed stars condense, forming microscopic grains of sand that eventually go on to become pebbles, boulders and whole planets.” Now that’s finding a miracle in a grain of sand.