With an entire universe of projects to choose from, scientists in the UW's astronomy department are often busy with tasks that stretch the boundaries of the human mind.

Some of these tasks include examining things like the nature of dark energy responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe, and how clusters of galaxies and galaxies themselves are bound together by the gravity of dark matter.

But not all of the astronomy department's research focuses on such far away endeavors. Since the return of the Stardust probe in January 2006, Professor Don Brownlee and others have been working on examining samples from the comet that Stardust tailed, in order to learn the origins of the solar system.

"We found that there was mixing of materials," Brownlee said. "A comet is cold, and contains ices that are 30 degrees Kelvin, 30 degrees above absolute zero. The rocks in the comet were found to be formed during white hot conditions. So, materials were formed in the innermost parts of the solar system and transported to the edge."

The solar system, Brownlee explained, was once simply a large disc of converging matter centered around the sun. Before Stardust came back, it was thought that the disc settled into zones and the zones into planets like our own, but Stardust's samples proved that there were processes within the disc that moved material from the center outward, providing a different explanation of how bodies such as Pluto and the comets got to where they are today.

Brownlee also talked about how this relates to other solar systems.

"We know that 7 percent of nearby stars have planets, at least," he said. "But well over half of nearby stars have comets. You can't see comets, but you can see the dust of comets. In our solar system, we know that a major fraction of the rock comets came from the inner part of the solar system."

This type of research translates quickly to education.

"What we have learned from this mission is in textbooks right now, already, and it has changed our interpretation of comets and how the solar system was made," Brownlee said.

Julie Lutz works for NASA's Earth and Space Sciences program as well as the astronomy department.

"We wind up doing workshops for teachers on comets, and part of that would be the Stardust results," Lutz said. "We're on a roll to let teachers know how they could do activities in their class. For example, with the Stardust mission, they developed an aerogel, or 'liquid smoke' to collect the particles. You can get fishing weights and drop them into the aerogel to see how heavy the weight is, to sort of illustrate what's going on and how Stardust collects its particles."

Lutz also does her own research looking at things like the Helix nebula.

"This star has thrown off a shell of gas, and it's a star that is probably not that different in mass from the sun, but is older," she said.

The outer parts of this formation "enrich interstellar space" as the white dwarf forms.

"The visibility for something like this is only tens of thousands of years, which is not that long for astronomy, which we measure in billions of years," Lutz said.

Along with these cooperative efforts, Cornell University is talking about the probability of sending up a second Stardust probe, called Stardust Next, Brownlee said.

The Astronomy Department focuses on:

• The nature of dark energy that accelerates the expansion of the universe

• How the gravity of dark matter binds galaxies and galaxy clusters together

• How our solar system was really formed

• What the past and future of our solar system are like

• How the death of a star enriches interstellar space and looks awesome at the same time

• The probability of dying from a comet colliding with the earth – which Professor Don Brownlee says is as much as a "one-in-a-million" chance

The recent Stardust probe proved that:

• Comets were formed under white-hot conditions near the center of the solar system

• These rocks were somehow pushed from the center of that mass to the edge

• Former theories about planet formation may be inaccurate based on this data

University of Washington astronomers work with a variety of institutions, including:

• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey

• Cornell University

• NASA

Reach Chaim Eliyah at features@thedaily.washington.edu.