While dust clumps were already known to play a role in seeding new planets and many other systems in space and on Earth, how the clumps formed was unknown until now. Phil Hopkins, who carried out this research with Jonathan (Jono) Squire, a former postdoc, says that it was previously assumed that dust was stable in gas, meaning the dust grains would ride along with the gas without much happening, or they would settle out of the gas if the particles were big enough, as is the case with soot from a fire. Read more