Research: New galaxies gather no dust

A rolling stone gathers no moss, or so the saying goes; apparently new galaxies gather no dust, either, an Australian researcher and his team found. David Fisher of Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn, Australia, and his team found very primitive galaxies have a much lower dust mass than expected, their findings in Monday's Nature magazine indicated. Calculations of the dust content in a local, star-forming galaxy with low metallicity offer clues about dust masses in very primitive galaxies. Fisher's team studied the galaxy I Zwicky 18, which is considered to be similar to early galaxies. The findings suggest prospects for detecting gas and dust in primitive systems aren't as good as previously thought, the researchers said.