Thousands of tonnes of cosmic dust hit Earth yearly, mostly burning in our atmosphere. But some survive as meteorites, providing clues about the universe. University of Sydney’s PhD candidate Linda Losurdo has created cosmic dust in the lab to help study how life’s building blocks formed. Cosmic dust comes from dying stars that emit carbon-rich gases. These gases form tiny dust particles with organic compounds like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, known as CHON molecules. These molecules are the chemical roots of life. Scientists debate if these molecules formed on Earth, arrived from space later, or both. To study this, Losurdo and her supervisor Prof David McKenzie used a vacuum chamber resembling space. They added gases found near dying stars and applied 10,000 volts to create plasma, producing dust similar to cosmic dust. This dust’s infrared fingerprint matches that found in meteorites. Astrophysicist Dr Sara Webb from Swinburne University praised the work as a beautiful way to simulate interstellar dust that helped build life on Earth. She said it might help simulate early life on other planets in future experiments. Losurdo stressed their dust mimics one space environment, serving as a plausible snapshot to compare with real cosmic dust. The findings appear in the Astrophysical Journal of the American Astronomical Society.