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The article provides information on the astronomers who have peered into the dust surrounding a nearby red dwarf star and have found that the dust grains have a fluffiness comparable to that of powder snow. The researchers in the University of California, Berkeley have confirmed that this is the first definitive measurement of the porosity of dust outside our solar system and is similar to looking back four billion years into the early days of the planetary system. According to James Graham, professor of astronomy at the University of California, this porosity is primordial and reflects the agglomeration process whereby interstellar grains first assembled to form macroscopic objects.