A newborn star is like a kitchen mixer: it whips up the surrounding cloud, and splatters fly in all directions. Only instead of batter, it's gas and dust. Previously, astronomers had only seen gas jets, and dust was considered too fragile: the shock wave should shatter dust grains into atoms.

The James Webb Space Telescope peered into the cloud BHR71, where a star is just beginning its life. The MIRI instrument split the jet's light into thousands of shades and found lines of iron, nickel, and cobalt — elements that make up dust grains. But some of these elements remained in the dust: it survived the shock and flew off with the gas. The dust is warm, 200–400 kelvins, like a heated skillet.

This is the first time dust has been caught in the jet of such a young star. This means that stars, from the moment of birth, scatter the building material for future planets and even for new stars. The cloud BHR71 is like an invisible hand sowing dust across the galaxy.