Consider the spot where you're sitting. Travel backwards in time and it might've been submerged at the bottom of a shallow sea, buried under miles of rock or floating through a molten landscape. But go back about 4.6 billion years, and you'd be in the middle of an enormous cloud of dust and gas orbiting a newborn star. What exactly is this cosmic dust? Lorin Matthews investigates. [Directed by Frederic Siegel (Team Tumult), narrated by Addison Anderson, music by Alon Peretz].

Lorin Swint Matthews: The dust bunnies that built our planet

The dust bunnies that built our planet

A dance of forces: van der Waals and electrostatic charges intricately weave particles into the fabric of our solar system.

From cosmic dust to planets: Our solar system's formation was driven by dust particles binding via van der Waals forces.

Chondrules in meteorites hint at mysterious heating processes that shaped the rocky bodies we now see in our solar system.