Donald Brownlee Billion Quotations

We?re using this comet as a library that picked up records and stored them far from the sun at very low temperatures for 4.5 billion years.

Virtually all of the atoms in our bodies and in the Earth were in interstellar grains - stardust grains - before the solar system formed. We're using this comet as a library that picked up records of the formation of our solar system, and has been storing them far from the sun at very low temperatures for four and a half billion years.

Its cargo was an ancient, cosmic treasure from the very edge of the solar system ? a treasure that formed when the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Last Sunday, after seven years in space traveling nearly three billion miles, Stardust landed in the Great Salt Lake Desert with a treasure from when the solar system formed 4.6 billion years ago. We should have more than one million particles larger than one micron in diameter.

We're approaching the end of a fantastic voyage. This is the farthest anything from Earth has traveled and come back. Soon we'll be able to examine the building blocks that formed the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.