Stars clean the universe

The Earth may be a polluted mess, but the rest of the universe appears to be cleaning up its act.

According to the European Space Agency, the Herschel observatory discovered that a small fraction of the age of the universe, galaxies contained more dust than galaxies today.

The reason for this is the interstellar grains which are tiny solid particles found in space vacuumed up by the stars, resulting in a cleaner and brighter galaxy.

“Our results show that the reason for this evolution is that galaxies used to contain more dust and gas in the past, and the universe is gradually becoming cleaner as the dust is used up,” said Dr Nathan Bourne, from the University of Edinburgh.