86. The physicist was on an outing at nightfall observing frequent comets and radical stardust at the observatory for leisure when he wrote and copyrighted classical astronomy textbook for ordinary scholars.
One would bring collection equipment that would allow it to scoop stardust right from the comet's icy tail, to help scientists analyse the chemical makeup of these frosty harbingers.
It was believed that this theory could be confirmed by travelling to one of these comets and picking up some of this loose dust – or " stardust" – that surrounds them in space.
The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, a brand-new award, is a conscious attempt to sprinkle a similar kind of stardust onto engineering, which has long worried that it is seen as a bit of a poor relation to more academic science.