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Dense\nregions of these clouds become\ngravitationally unstable and\ncollapse, forming rotating\nprotostars surrounded by proto-planetary disks. As density and temperature rise in the core, hydrogen\nfusion ignites, forming a main-sequence\nstar. The surrounding disk of gas, dust,\nand ice sets the chemical composition\nof future planets. This initial chemical\ninventory influences planetary atmospheres, water content, and the potential\nto support life.\n\nThe icy, dusty particles present\nduring star and planet formation differ\nfrom what we know here on Earth. In\nspace, dust can be solid and hard, coming\nfrom metals, silicates, and carbon-containing species. The dust doesn’t have to\nbe gray nor powdery. The “ice” can be\nmade from water but also carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, and other\nvolatile molecules. Even nitrogen, which\nis known as a gas on Earth, freezes into\na fluffy solid in space. So, Greenspoon\nand her advisor Professor Jennifer Bergner\nbuilt their unique instrument to understand the strange environments of space.\n\nAstronomers study star and planetary formation using telescopes like the\nJames Webb Space Telescope (JWST).\nJWST can identify the composition of\nmolecular clouds by detecting unique\npatterns in the clouds’ light absorbance\nand emittance. But there’s a crucial gap:\ntelescopes cannot reveal how microscopic\nchemistry affects the initial conditions\nfor star and planetary formation. They\ncannot resolve the fine structure of interstellar ices, detect trace components, or\ncapture the surface processes that drive chemical change. Yet local interactions\nand spatial arrangements ultimately shape\nthe chemical pathways that influence\nplanetary atmospheres, compositions,\nand the evolution of prebiotic molecules\ninto life forms.\n\nScientists like Eleanor Greenspoon\nand Professor Jennifer Bergner probe what\ntelescopes cannot: how molecules behave\nafter settling onto icy dust particles.\nRather than cataloging which molecules\nexist in space, Greenspoon investigates\nwhat happens after landing: whether molecules react with neighbors, rearrange, or\nreshape the surrounding ice. She examines which chemical transformations are\npossible, favorable, and rapid depending\non ice porosity and composition.\nGreenspoon’s homemade, submarine-like device makes it possible to\nmeasure these microscopic reactions. By\nmimicking the cold vacuum of space,\nher module enables gases to be mixed\naccurately and cooled into an icy layer\natop a metal surface. To accurately measure low-pressure chemistry, Greenspoon\nmust prevent contamination. The aluminum foil in her setup hides heating\ncoils that vaporize sticky residues; these\nare then pumped out by the vacuum\nsystem to prevent tube contamination between experiments.\n\nIn addition to precise compositional control, Greenspoon’s setup\nallows direct measurements of surface\nchemistry. Greenspoon explains, “The\nsurface is where gases can land and stick,\nso surface binding is the starting point\nfor chemical reactions.” Gas phase reactions would be extremely slow in space\nwithout surfaces, because gas molecules\nin interstellar clouds only collide roughly\nonce every two months.\n\nBecause the surface of a particle\nis often less than 1 percent of its total\nvolume, Greenspoon needs to use specialized techniques to probe surface chemistry. Greenspoon probes ultra-cold ices\nusing a technique called XANES-TEY.\nThis technique involves firing X-rays at a\nsample and measuring the electrons that\nare kicked out from the surface. Electrons from deeper within the material\nlose energy before reaching the detector.\nAs a result, the technique detects changes\nfrom a nanometer-scale depth: roughly a thousand times\nthinner than a human hair. The\ntechnique is also composition sensitive, because each element has a different arrangement of excitable electrons.\n\nWith this foil-wrapped machine in a\nBerkeley lab, Greenspoon, Bergner, and\ntheir colleagues are decoding the chemistry of stellar and planetary birth. We\nmay never watch a star or a planet form\nin real time, but experiments like these\ncan reveal the molecular choreography\nthat makes it possible.","image":{"publicURL":"/static/d4e0fbb77d948932ad0293aa849e9ffc/b2a7c14260ffeb358b75d6d42e365e90.png"},"authors":[{"id":"681e8cdf54c55417f9138472","name":"Sydney Hemenway"}],"designers":[{"id":"6a1b3ef1a1914505ee622e76","name":"Laurel Miller"}],"categories":[{"id":"6030b07d7782326a48b058bf","title":"The Universe"}],"magazine":{"id":"6a1b3daba1914505ee622e6e","title":"Spring 2026","issue":50}},"recent":{"edges":[{"node":{"id":"Article_6a1b7b70a1914505ee622e8a","title":"A quarter-century of BSR","authors":[{"id":"6930d4c5a1914505ee622e05","name":"Eleanor Wang"}],"categories":[],"image":{"publicURL":"/static/e2535987c5657a0ccb90aefc70d390fa/d0381637f7e57d0c526bc22c6b39f421.png"},"published_at":"2026-05-31T19:32:44.843Z"}},{"node":{"id":"Article_6a1c7dfda1914505ee622e93","title":"A taste of Ohlone 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