Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Supermassive Podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society.

With me, science journalist Izzy Clark, astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst and the Society's deputy director, Dr. Robert Massey.

This is the place where we dive into the supermassive mailbox even more to tide you all over

between normal episodes and we answer some more of your questions. But before we get into the questions,

we have to do a shout out to Maj Johansson who has emailsed us to say, Hi guys, I would just like

to thank you for awakening my childhood love or obsession with space. I work as a doctor and realize how much I missed physics and space.

So now I'm taking a part-time class that is basically how space works for people who know a little but not super much in my free time at a university.

Shout out to Linnaeus University.

Much love from Sweden.

How nice is that? So so good that's so nice

I'm so glad we could help in rekindling that passion are we influencers I think we're

influencers the the look of concern on Becky's face right there okay so Becky can you help with

this question from Mike in Oregon?

They say, the bicep experiment was fooled by dust.

Tired light is caused by dust.

The dimming and brightening of beetle juice is thought to have been due to dust.

There's so much dust everywhere, but what is the dust that is so ubiquitous in the cosmos love the podcast mike

well i like to say that dust is supernova poop mike i feel like it is the best description

of what it is that is not where i really just not what i was where i was expecting this to go but

i love it carry on description i don't know what else to call it because that's literally what it is, right?

It is the heavier elements, things like carbon, nitrogen, that are produced by stars as like they put off dying, right? They've run out of hydrogen so they scramble and they're like, oh, I just convert the helium. Oh, this is to convert the carbon. and then when they do eventually die and go supernova or nova or just fizzling out,

like they spread those elements back out into the carbon. And then when they do eventually die and go supernova or novo, just fizzling out,

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